Eleven [Hardcover]

Patricia Highsmith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 1970

The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psychological thrillers The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. A critically acclaimed best seller in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Starting in 2011, Grove Press will begin to reissue nine of Highsmith’s works. Eleven is Highsmith’s first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability. Here naturalists meet gruesome ends and unhinged heroes disturb our sympathies. This is a captivating, important collection from “one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century” (Otto Penzler). Includes an introduction by Graham Greene.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“What is striking about these stories is their integrity: they are all of a piece; they grow, with that tensed-spring inevitability of the unfolding rose observed by elapsed-time photography; together they are a brilliant collection.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“The mood of nagging apprehension is consistent, skillfully underplayed so that just the right amount of chill is induced with an economy of means.” —J. R. Frankes, The New York Times Book Review

“Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear. . . . In her short stories Highsmith naturally has to adopt a different method. She is after the quick kill rather than the slow encirclement of the reader, and how admirably and with what field-craft she hunts us down.” —Graham Greene

“Highsmith’s genius is in presenting fantasy’s paradox: successes are not what they seem . . . Where in the traditional fairy tale the heroine turns the toad into a prince, in Highsmith’s fable the prince becomes a toad—success is nearly always fatal. . . . Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction—a reflection—the stories are fabulous, in all senses of that word.” —Paul Theroux

"A brilliant collection.” —The Sunday Times (UK)

“One of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the 20th century.” —Otto Penzler

"She’s sui generis, a writer of almost occult power.”—Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd; 1St Edition edition (July 6, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 043433510X
• ISBN-13: 978-0434335107
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,279,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars all of Highsmith's talents in bite-sized pieces, January 27, 2001

By 

lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eleven (Paperback)

Highsmith is noted for her novels of odd (read: neurotic) individuals who often exhibit some sort of criminial behaviour. I am certainly a Highsmith devotee. 'Eleven', a collection of 11 short stories, is my first taste of Patricia Highsmith in smaller doses.

As with most collections of short stories, 'Eleven' is a hit-and-miss affair. The stories are at minimum competent, with a couple being quite interesting (, creepy, weird, et al). Unfortunately unlike with her novels, these compact stories do not play to Highsmith's strengths - that is, dissecting her characters and their phobias.

However I do recommend 'Eleven' for those who simply don't have the time or patience to read Highsmith's novels. It certainly makes for excellent commuting reading material.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars most of the stories deserved a five star rating, November 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Eleven (Paperback)

A couple of so-so stories in this collection, but most are extraordinary. "The Snail Watcher" is her most well-known story, and it is truly bizarre, but the best stories are more quietly unsettling, such as "Another Bridge to Cross" (which has an almost Hemingway feel to the writing), "When the Fleet Was In at Mobile," "The Herione," "Mrs Afton, among Thy Green Braes."

My two favorite stories are "Cries of Love," and "The Empty Birdhouse."

I've read a couple of critics and several readers who have suggested she was not as good a writer of stories as novels, but from this collection, at least, I would have to disagree. Now I prefer her novels, but these stories were as good as any writer's. A few times the reader is given the character's past in a lump dose that hurts the strength of the story, such as "The Heroine," and "The Empty Birdhouse," but that is an inherent obstacle of the short story format. I still had a good feel for those characters, and I still felt the overall impact of the story. Some truly great stories.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A world of obsessions., July 6, 2000

By 

Adriana Villanueva (Caracas, Miranda Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eleven (Paperback)

Patricia Highsmith is a wonderful story teller, and with Eleven she masters the short story genre. Her tales are not easy; its a world of strange and obssesive people who always push their obsessions to the limit, and you as a reader will feel involved in this claustrophobic world. So beware when you're reading it, you may feel someone strangely breathing on your neck.