I couldn't get through this title. It ended up not being for me, but I hope it finds a hope with other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

,“Devil’s Lust’s and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith” (2021) is a bold and definitive examination of the late eccentric lesbian literary icon. Research Professor Richard Bradford teaches at Ulster University, located in the U.K. and was among the first to discover that most of the personal information about Highsmith was obtained directly from her own interviews, papers, and detailed journals diaries/cahier’s. When this information was carefully checked, cross-referenced and verified for accuracy, he discovered an entire web of Highsmith’s own manipulative behaviors, deliberate deceit, and shocking untruths. Before her death, Highsmith sold her papers to the Bern Literary Archive in Switzerland.

Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) was born in Ft. Worth, Texas to care-free artistic parents that finalized their divorce when Highsmith was an infant. The root of her mental instability may have developed from a sense of being unwanted and unloved. Raised by her grandparents, she was later sent to a girl’s boarding school where she grandly compared her heritage to “Gone With The Wind.” It was unlikely that she was treated for the 1918 Flu Epidemic that claimed the lives of millions worldwide. Despite attempts to repair the mother-daughter relationship, Highsmith demonized her mother and step-father, thriving in family distress and conflict, avoiding peaceful interactions, and refused to overlook or forgive any slight, real or imagined.
Highsmith attended college at Barnard (1938-42) and after completing her education, she attained a job as an editorial assistant for FFF Publishing, a large established firm that mostly published Jewish newspapers and journals. The editor, B.Z. Goldberg gave her writing attention and advice which helped launch her first bestselling novel “Strangers On A Train” (1950)— the film rights were bought by Alfred Hitchcock. Highsmith could not resist making anti-Semitic comments and slurs against this employer, her hateful derogatory remarks against the Jews and other minorities continued unchecked throughout her life.

With the recommendation of Truman Capote, Highsmith briefly spent time at Yaddo, the Gothic Tudor artist/writer’s residence in Saratoga. N.Y. (1948). Initially the first drafts of her novel were rejected. Highsmith began an intimate relationship with the handsome charming British novelist Marc Brandel (1919-94). According to Bradford, Brandel was probably her ideal heterosexual match. Highsmith attended sessions with a psychoanalyst that probed her “deviant” homosexual tendencies: Highsmith’s patterns of loving and leaving her lesbian lovers were deeply rooted in her hatred of her mother, further group therapy was recommended. Privately, Highsmith didn’t take her analyst seriously, and mocked her behind her back. After Brandel was coldly discarded, he retaliated with his novel: “The Choice” (1952)—about a creepy cockroach exterminator and his grotesque unmistakably evil girlfriend Jill-- who was based on Highsmith.
“The Price of Salt” (1952) was “the first lesbian novel with a happy ending”. It was evident that Highsmith knew the power and influence of her writing on friends and lovers, and mined their lives for material in her novels that often contained “dark and terrifying” themes. Her most lasting and significant lesbian relationship was with a Jewish humanitarian social worker, Ellen Blumenthal Hill. Highly intelligent, Hill was seduced and romanced by extravagant meals and exciting European travel, she was forced to maintain a healthy distance for her own safety and well-being when her loyalty, love, and devotion to Highsmith nearly ended her life.
Novelist Marijane Meeker provided a detailed account of her relationship with Highsmith in her memoir: “Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950’s” (2003). By that time, Highsmith was likely an alcoholic. Bradford also
noted a lack of creditability or believable diary/cahier accounts of these particular relationships. None of Highsmith's intimate relationships lasted long.

Highsmith moved to Europe in 1963, where she resided in spacious luxury homes for the rest of her life. Her European fans attended her readings and purchased her novels in record numbers, insuring her fame and status as an international celebrity author. In the U.S. her novels were reviewed favorably by some critics, but were viewed as less interesting and unappealing among mass readership. Highsmith won countless literary awards, produced 22 novels and numerous short stories. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1955) is critically acclaimed as a literary masterpiece. Thomas Ripley is also cited as of the most fascinating biographical fictional characters of all time-- described as a charming, soulless, predator, few things separate the seductive con-man from the writer that created him. However, unlike Thomas Ripley, Highsmith never murdered anyone in real life, only on the page. Patricia Highsmith died alone at Carita Hospital in Locarno, Switzerland. ** With appreciation to Bloomsbury via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

This was really interesting. I was always a fan of her's but was only familiar with "The price of salt" aka Carol, and knew she had some other best sellers but had no real information or knowledge about the author herself, so it was really great to find out more about her... especially the not so great parts. A lot of people think that being gay makes someone an amazing human being, sadly that is not the case, especially with her.

A decent beginning text covering PH's life and work, but there are shortcomings for the experienced PH reader. See my review of this biography at The Washington Independent Review of Books (link below).

Patricia Highsmith was by all accounts a horrible person, who was beset with Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires.

Patricia was a drunk racist anti-Semite. She drank from morning to night. She stated that “black men become physically ill if they did not have sex many times a month” and were too “feckless and stupid to realize that unprotected intercourse led to pregnancy”. And that was in 1992–not the 1800s. Patricia berated her beloved Nazis for only killing half the Jews on earth instead of all of them. She thought Israel should be abolished and its lands returned to the Palestine’s. Yet she had long-term affairs with three Jewish women.

However, Patricia did have some great novels within her. The Talented Mr. Ripley series and Strangers on a Train being the most famous examples. She was tight with her money and died with an estate of more than three million dollars. So, despite her demons, she was successful in her art.

Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires is a well-researched biography about a woman who hid her demons from the public view. My issue with the book is the beginning is a slow slog through Patricia’s youth. However, once that part is over, the pacing picks up considerably. There is no argument that Patricia was a unique woman. So if that intrigues you, pick up this book. 3 stars.

Thanks to Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

A Look Into the Dark Inner World of Patricia Highsmith

Author: Charles Green

January 22, 2021

Author of such novels as Strangers on A Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith captured brilliant, amoral characters willing to manipulate and even kill other people to achieve their goals. In Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith, biographer Richard Bradford shows that these characters were often dark reflections of Highsmith herself.

To say that Patricia Highsmith’s life was filled with troubled complexities would be an understatement. The author had a continuously fraught romantic life. One of her lovers once attempted suicide after Highsmith betrayed her with another woman. “She seemed to enjoy affairs with married women”, Bradford writes, suggesting that were she around today, “one could imagine her taking great delight in adding breaking up lesbian marriages to her repertoire.”

She made incredibly offensive, even outrageous remarks about Blacks and Jews, even though, as Bradford remarks, “three of the women to whom she declared her undying love…were Jewish”, and, apart from a dedication in one late novel “To the courage of the Palestinian people,” she kept political sentiments out of her published writing. She drank near-constantly, from early in the morning till late at night, always secreting bottles around her wherever she went. A psychiatrist who met her at a party commented “that she was in his opinion insane, dangerous and someone who should be committed.”

Bradford, a Professor at Ulster University and the University of Avignon, and author of biographies of George Orwell and Earnest Hemmingway, draws heavily on two earlier biographies of Highsmith, Andrew Wilson’s Beautiful Shadow and Joan Schenkar’s The Talented Miss Highsmith. Highsmith presents a difficult case for any biographer, for although “she was a prolific diary keeper”–8,000 pages–she seems to have deliberately included false or misleading information. For instance, she claims that she nearly died of the Spanish Flu in 1925, long after the epidemic had ended.

Indeed, Bradford remarks on the similarity of her habit with a novel of hers, Edith’s Diary, in which the protagonist records events far differently than what really happened. He wonders whether Highsmith, who at the time of writing that novel was donating her personal papers, including diaries, to the Swiss archives, relished the idea of creating a false trail for future researchers. Fortunately, he works his way through the tangle of misinformation, indicating when her facts may be wrong, to build an engaging life of the author, one that looks at her writing through the context of her life.

Bradford crafts a dramatic portrait of Highsmith’s life. Born to Texas artists who divorced shortly after Highsmith was born, she learned that her mother tried to abort her, and she lived mainly with her grandparents before moving to New York for high school and Barnard College. She seemed to be something of a social climber then, flirting and sleeping with many wealthy, influential women, some of whom supported her later in her career.

Her first novel, Strangers on A Train, found remarkable success, especially after Alfred Hitchcock turned it into a movie, although he took out much of the homoerotic subtext between the main characters Guy and Bruno. The Talented Mr. Ripley was similarly popular, encouraging Highsmith to write four sequels featuring the charming, scheming murderer Tom Ripley. Bradford suggests that she desired to join the wealthy upper classes but resented how out-of-place and uncomfortable she felt among them; once, at a high society party in London, she sat in a separate room, drinking. The psychiatrist who made his remark about her at this party, “was struck by her facial expression, which he claimed never to have encountered outside of a mental institution.”

Her novel The Price of Salt, now known as Carol, was inspired by seeing a woman at the department store where she worked to earn extra cash. She was briefly obsessed with this woman, even tracking down where she lived, but nothing ultimately came of it. The novel captures the intense feelings of love between women, as well as the paranoia and secrecy lesbians suffered through at that time. Bradford explains that while lesbians, unlike gay men, were rarely prosecuted, they could lose custody of their children.

Highsmith’s love life was prolific and tumultuous. Several times, she took lovers along the same European itinerary as one of her earlier relationships, as though she were trying to recapture the intensity of a first love. Her diaries record her passion for the women she loved, describing them in glorious terms that almost inevitably lead to disappointment. One relationship did prove to have some permeance but proved frustrating, as the woman was married to an accommodating, understanding English gentleman, but she did not allow them to see each other very often. She could also be incredibly cruel, as Bradford describes how “she watched as her girlfriend washed down half a bottle of high-strength barbiturates with gin and then left for supper with friends, one of whom Highsmith had sex with the day before.”

Bradford illuminates Highsmith’s talents and pitfalls by connecting them to her work. Bradford skillfully argues that Highsmith’s novels, even the ones not as well known, offer clues to the author’s personality. For those familiar with Highsmith’s novels, Devils, Lusts, and Strange Desires should deepen their understanding, while hopefully encouraging those just encountering her work to read further.

Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith
by Richard Bradford
Bloomsbury
Hardcover, 9781448217908, 258 pp.
January 2021

Patricia Highsmith was not a nice person. Period. Full stop. No one, absolutely no one, will argue against that fact. She was erratic, crude, obnoxious, cruel, both sadistic and masochistic, and mentally unstable. The general consensus among those who knew her is that had Highsmith not been a successful writer she would have probably been institutionalized. If any of what you just read offends you in the least, then you should not read this book.

In Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires the author (Richard Bradford) does an admirable job of examining the correlation between Highsmith's personal life and demons with those of the fictional characters she created. The real life events and relationships that influenced and inspired her work and, in some cases, the way her fiction served as a kind of "revenge" mechanism for Highsmith. A fantasy reality that sometimes became embedded with the actual one.

The author offers critical assessments of her most well-known works with examinations into how her life circumstances enhanced and hindered her endeavors. A lot of speculation as to motivations and thought processes. The author also looks deeper into Highsmith's diaries and notebooks with an eye towards determining fact from fiction and whether she was aware of how much "fantasy" she was documenting as reality (Conclussion? Yes and no, it's complicated).

While this book is an unvarnished look at a disturbed (and often disturbing) individual whose great talent was nearly eclipsed by her deviant tendencies the content is never presented in a salacious or sensationalist manner.

I have never read any other biographies on Highsmith (at least two are referenced as source material for this book) so I can't speculate as to how this one might compare to previous ones. In the end the reader is given an overview of Highsmith's life and work that will, at the very least, give some insight into the writer and her creations.

Not sure I would recommend it to the casual fan but I found it quite interesting.

This is adult stuff. R-rated. Sexual content, adult language, disturbing imagery. Not for the easily offended.

***I received a free digital copy of this title through NetGalley.

A troubled and unlikable subject Highsmith was a racist anti-Semite according to her diaries. A promiscuous lesbian, she had.troubled relationships hurt by her alcoholism. No question that.some of.her writing is.daring and dark. The author points out that many of her diary entries could not be substantiated by other sources including many of her hookups and places visited. Without sources, the biography seems speculative at best.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

It's probably unlikely that many people would pick up a biography of Patricia Highsmith without knowing that her books are dark, violent, sprinkled with insanity, but very well-written. So, it shouldn't be surprising to many that biographies of Highsmith have a similar darkness. This book by Richard Bradford is more thoroughly researched than previous biographies and he clarifies some events and relationships that were not presented accurately or completely before. The reference notes are very helpful in aiding the reader to assess the value of quotations and anecdotes.
Bradford delineates more carefully than other authors where Highsmith's diaries ("cahiers") are not factual records but largely or entirely fantasy. These lines cannot always be drawn with certainty, but Bradford researches every significant entry to determine what he can. One improvement, in my opinion, that this biography makes over previous ones is that the author appreciates how much the notebooks were some combination of factual retelling and the working through of imaginative story elements. It appears that Highsmith may have written entries that began as real events or descriptions of real relationships but morphed into characters and plots that became parts of her novels and short stories. This is obviously a very difficult task, but in my opinion Bradford has done the absolute best he could by assembling the jigsaw puzzle of known people and happenings in Highsmith's life versus diary entries with no known verification.
As most people familiar with Highsmith know, she was a very unpleasant, addicted, manipulative, and mercurial person. It is likely she never actually loved another human being but that didn't stop her from attempts to seduce women at every opportunity, especially if they were someone else's lover. A very important fact about Highsmith that Bradford has pieced together is that her most productive writing came during times of complete chaos in her personal life. One relationship in particular was remarkably amicable and rewarding due to her partner's kind and patient disposition. Highsmith came to a complete standstill in her writing during this period. She sent in incomplete manuscripts to her editor and agent, and both returned them expressing confusion as to the meaning of the story and turns in the plot. Plus, the books just came to a sudden stop. Highsmith's remedy was to tell her current partner that she needed some time away to finish her writing but actually traveled to France where a previous lover lived. This relationship had ended horribly with an almost-successful suicide attempt by the lover to which Highsmith reacted hardly at all; physical violence between them appeared to be the coda of the relationship. Highsmith appeared on the ex's doorstep, elbowed her way in, got a drink (always a constant), and announce that she thought they should reconcile. The ex's reaction was horrified fury. Highsmith escalated the situation and at last was thrown out bodily after hours of this mayhem. She returned to Switzerland to her loving partner, sat down, and finished the book which was very well received by her editor and critics.
Bradford makes a good case for the primary importance of Highsmith's writing in her life, and she may have found ways to use her compulsive sexuality to further her creativity. A particularly interesting story is how the book The Price of Salt (later, Carol) came to be written.
There is some evidence that mental illness ran in Highsmith's family, and she had a very unstable and probably sexually abusive childhood. She reached a point in early adulthood where she drank during all waking hours. These factors make it difficult to sort out the relative causes of Highsmith's mental and emotional disturbance. Bradford refers to Kay Jamison's book about the linkage of mental illness and creativity in some people; Bradford suggests HIghsmith might have suffered from bipolar disorder.
For any reader interested in how an especially imaginative author produces her books, this may be a particularly compelling book. It is similar in tone to biographies of Robert Lowell, John Cheever, and other writers whose lives were hard on the people who loved them and whose gift was somehow entangled with their curse. Sorting out this process of causes and effects can be beyond the abilities of the best biographer, but Richard Bradford has come close to explaining the unexplainable.

The powerful story of Patricia Highsmith, one of the most talented writers of thriller/mysteries. Her storytelling was legendary but who was the woman behind these stories.

Eccentric lesbian alcoholic, Highsmith was plagued with mental health issues that both helped her writing but harmed her entire life.

Thanks to netGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to write a biography about such a vile person. Patricia Highsmith had few redeeming qualities and is not someone I would care to meet during the light of day much less at the dead of night. At one point she kept snails on lettuce leaves in handbag. That is moving from the eccentric into the outright bizarre. Name a prejudice and she embraced it not to neglect mentioning she was an accomplished liar. A pathological mess? Definitely. Nonetheless, she did famously write The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. This biography successfully takes a look a Highsmith’s work within the context of her life.

Let me start this review by stating that I looked forward to this new biography of Patricia Highsmith and hoped that it would be a compelling and satisfying read. I certainly appreciate the time, attention and research of the author but found this somewhat dark and difficult. Yes, there are some interesting and insightful moments where the author shines but he appears to have a disdain for Highsmith’s lesbian lifestyle and draws a similarity of sexual predator between her and her creation Tom Ripley. That made uncomfortable reading for me and seemed more accusation than a fact. Certainly, Ripley was a murderer and predator but I cannot see that parallel in Ms. Highsmith. She had a manipulative and cruel personality with an often deplorable moral code. She was an alcoholic who struggled with cycles of depression that intensified over the years. She possessed the inability to sustain an intimate relationship. Frequently conflicted about her sexuality she had affairs with men but was never physically attracted to them and women, especially of high social standing. Although primarily a private woman she was extremely outspoken when talking about her sexuality.
My impression is that her most fulfilling and rewarding relationships were with her characters. In their company she radiated brilliance and that is what she should be remembered for.
Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.