Patricia Highsmith’s Diaries Reveal the Complicated Woman Behind The Talented Mr. Ripley

“Should like to do a novel,” wrote 20-year-old Patricia Highsmith in 1941. “Something brilliant of course.” Nine years later she’d publish her first, Strangers on a Train, with The Talented Mr. Ripley and nearly two dozen more to follow. Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, out from Liveright and compiled by Highsmith’s longtime editor Anna von Planta, provides stunning access to the mind of a notoriously secretive author. In youth, Highsmith juggled parties and mercurial love affairs (“I almost kissed her when we left but not quite”) with a desire for literary greatness. “Got very good work done,” she wrote… Read Full Article