Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith Book

Any list of the greatest or most influential American writers that leaves off Patricia Highsmith is not to be trusted.

Those that know of Highsmith likely do because of the perfectly cast film adaptation of her best known work, "The Talented Mr. Ripley," though it may come as a surprise to learn that Hitchcock has adapted her too, in his 1951 film, "Strangers on a Train." More recent film adaptations have featured Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Issac ("The Two Faces of January") and Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara ("Carol" from Highsmith's "The Price of Salt").

And yet I can't help but feel that Highsmith is criminally underrated. What other author has contributed the source material for so many notable, acclaimed films, and yet remains so underread?

Despite being born in the US (in Texas), it seems that Highsmith never made much of a splash stateside, instead receiving much of her critical acclaim (and awards) as well as the devoted readership that she most certainly deserved, overseas, primarily in Europe.

If anyone needs to be convinced of what a crushingly good author Highsmith is, point them no further than this extraordinary collection of short stories. There really is something here for everyone, and everything here will appeal to lovers of fine prose and riveting storytelling.

I would finish a story, praising it as the best I'd ever read, but just as soon start on the next, and soon be praising that one as the best I'd ever read.

What I love about Highsmith is how effortlessly she plumbs the depths of the human psyche. She is, perhaps more than any other author, deeply in touch with the darker side of human nature, and reading her is a "guilty pleasure" not because doing so and admitting it to a learned audience would be an embarrassment, but because her stories tickle some dark part of ourselves, they tease our inhibitions and satisfy that part within us that wants, in some previously unexpressed ' or certainly unconfessed ' way to see evil prevail.

Her villains give more pleasure than any heroes and heroines you can find, because while we admire literature's heroes ' men like Atticus Finch and women like Jo March ' we recognized that they aren't altogether like us, they're too pure, too saintly. When we look into the mirror, it's not them we see, but instead conflicted and often murderous characters like Tom Ripley.

We most love those who remind us of ourselves, flaws and all, and no one writes flaws and all better than Highsmith.

This collection is divided into five parts. The first part, "The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder" is all about animals getting comeuppance on (mostly) abusive humans. The 13 stories within this part run the gamut from a circus elephant taking revenge on a cruel trainer to a camel with a vendetta against a former master. The enjoyment I took in this part was generally linked to the sympathy/revulsion I felt for the animal in question, which is to say that I enjoyed the ones with the camel, elephant, and horse perhaps the most, and the ones with the rat and the cockroach the least, though they're all brilliantly done.

The second part, "Little Tales of Misogyny" are just that ' 17 short, at times almost vignettes, of women fighting against the misogyny of the outside world.

The third part, "Slowly, Slowly in the Wind" featured 12 of my favorite tales of the entire collection, villainous tales featuring murderous deeds and deliciously dark characters. The title story of this collection, about a man's rivalry with a stubborn neighbor, is a standout, as is "Woodrow Wilson's Necktie" about a series of murders that take place in a wax museum.

The 11 stories that comprise the fourth part, "The Black House," are also favorites, and alternate between tales of whimsy and psychological horror. The title story is one of the finest short stories I've read in some time, the kind of thing you find yourself thinking about for days afterward, and I perhaps recognized far more of myself in the darkly calculating characters of "Not One of Us" than I care to admit.

The fifth part, "Mermaids on the Golf Course," is less murderous and more psychotic, as these 11 stories poke at the insecurities and mental issues afflicting human society. "The Button" was riveting in its exploration of how a man turns his feeling of familial helplessness against the world at large while "Where the Action Is" had something of the creepiness that I recall from the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller "Nightcrawler."

I would love to go into more detail about these stories and what I loved about them, but with 64 of them here, I think it's a far better use of your time to actually just pick up this incomparable collection and start reading.

As I read, I found myself constantly thinking that this is exactly how I would have wanted this story written, and caught off guard by how familiar these characters and their actions felt to me, as though I'd lived these stories in some part of me before.

It's like a perfectly calibrated season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where you laugh because this is exactly what you would have done in Larry's position, except here the similarity to the actions taken by Highsmith's characters is deeply unsettling.

This is the essential Highsmith, representing some of her very best work. It's a fascinating, eerie ride through your own mind, and a testament to all that fiction is capable of. I'm still trying to peel my jaw off the floor.