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Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith Paperback – November 17, 2003

by Patricia Highsmith (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 92 ratings
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"Highsmith is no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre...than are Doestoevsky, Faulkner and Camus."―Joan Smith, Los Angeles Times

The Patricia Highsmith renaissance continues with Nothing That Meets the Eye, a brilliant collection of twenty-eight psychologically penetrating stories, a great majority of which are published for the first time in this collection.

This volume spans almost fifty years of Highsmith's career and establishes her as a permanent member of our American literary canon, as attested by recent publication of two of these stories in The New Yorker and Harper's. The stories assembled in Nothing That Meets the Eye, written between 1938 and 1982, are vintage Highsmith: a gigolo-like psychopath preys on unfulfilled career women; a lonely spinster's fragile hold on reality is tethered to the bottle; an estranged postal worker invents homicidal fantasies about his coworkers. While some stories anticipate the diabolical narratives of the Ripley novels, others possess a Capra-like sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light. From this new collection, a remarkable portrait of the American psyche at mid-century emerges, unforgettably distilled by the inimitable eye of Patricia Highsmith. A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Rave of 2002.
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  1. Print length
    466 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    November 17, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.3 x 8.2 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0393325008
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393325003
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A thrilling compendium of work full of surprises."
― Ed Siegel, Boston Globe

"Almost every piece...contains touches that reveal what a subtle writer Highsmith was."
― James Campbell, New York Times

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (November 17, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 466 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393325008
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393325003
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 92 ratings

About the author

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Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

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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

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
92 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

JACK C. BROWN
5.0 out of 5 stars Really high on Highsmith
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2002
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She's baaack! A second anthology of Patricia Highsmith's short fiction, this time featuring stories that have not been published until now.
Unlike the first collection of her short fiction (where many of the stories struck me as mere character sketches) the contents of "Nothing That Meets the Eye" are all fully developed short stories. One of my favorites features the subtle yet obvious menace of a stranger with candy, a very, to paraphrase the story's title, "Nice Sort of Man." The one story that fails to impress in the collection is "The Born Failure." It features a downtrodden, Job-like little man who lurches from one disappointment to the next. The story ends in an oddly sappy upbeat "It's a Wonderful Life" way, as if Highsmith suddenly got bored with cataloguing this character's misfortunes and wanted him off her hands. Interestingly enough, she didn't kill off the Failure. Possibly because for such a loser death might have seemed a kindness.
An added bonus is Paul Ingendaay's biographical essay, which follows the collected short stories. It gives a greater insight into Highsmith's literary process, touches on her lesbianism, and its probable influences on her body of work. (I'd always thought it odd that, in a wild divergence from her more mainstream suspense fiction, Highsmith had written the lesbian-themed novel, The Price of Salt, under the name of Claire Morgan.) Even more intriguing is the fact that Highsmith, apparently a meticulous literary craftsman, left behind a treasure trove of workbooks, notebooks, journals, as well as typescripts of drafts of published and unpublished works. Hopefully one day these literary artifacts will also find their way into print.
37 people found this helpful
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mickeymouse
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Collection
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2014
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Overall, I enjoyed the collection. I though I'd read all of Highsmith's short stories, so I was very excited when I found this collection, which truly does contain stories you won't find in any other publication of Highsmith's short stories. There was, of course, the occasional dud, but most stories were good and some were gems. I have enjoyed her other collections (The Black House, Mermaids on the Golf Course, etc.) more than these, but if you like Highsmith, I would still recommend the Uncollected Stories. If you're looking to read her for the first time, I would recommend starting with The Black House or one of her Ripley novels. Great stuff. Best enjoyed alone in a dimly lit room at night.
9 people found this helpful
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dorothy eisengart
5.0 out of 5 stars Condition as advertised.
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2023
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Condition of book as advertised and booked received in advance of date expected. The work is for a literature course I am enrolled in.
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Wanda Legend
5.0 out of 5 stars Long last
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2016
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Finally in press, these, the uncollected stories of Patricia Highsmith, provide dimension to a writer better-known for her successful screenplays and movies. This is a big book spanning Highsmith's career.Many of these stories could use a light editorial touch. At their best, they demonstrate Highsmith's command of the projected mental landscape of the solitary self, male or female. Her fusion of thought and landscape is often remarkable, indeed cinematic. The reader truly gazes. I often found myself reading as if mesmerized. In this world of emotional weather, moods change with passing clouds, startled birds, pebbles underfoot. Recurrent themes are observation, witness, and opinion--what others think about the pursuit of happiness. "No man is an island," wrote Ernest Hemingway, quoting John Donne. "But all women are," Highsmith replies in the collective voice of these enduring short stories.
8 people found this helpful
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Michael G.
3.0 out of 5 stars Twenty-eight short stories.
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2023
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Nothing That Meets the Eye (2002) is a compendium of short stories authored by Patricia Highsmith over a period of more than four decades. Many of the 28 entries had never before been accessible to the public. A wide range of short story subtypes are represented. Some are whimsical like the undated "A Bird in the Hand". A number of others are more reflective of the "deadlier" fiction with which Highsmith is usually identified.
For my money, the best of the 28 is "The Great Cardhouse" (1949), an imaginative fable demonstrating more than one moral.
A rich sampling of the author's short fiction. Recommended to those readers with more than a passing interest in Highsmith. Her writing. Her life.
2 people found this helpful
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Bill
4.0 out of 5 stars Essential Highsmith Collection
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2015
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A must-have collection for Highsmith fans, showing the development of her craft during different periods of her illustrious career. I place her along with P.D. James as one of the godmothers of Euro-noir.
2 people found this helpful
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Corkerstein
5.0 out of 5 stars great writer
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2020
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I read her story in the New Yorker. So I bought this short story collection. I liked it a lot!
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Stutz
5.0 out of 5 stars Not For The Squeamish!
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2021
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She has a wonderfully nasty attitude!
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Top reviews from other countries

Anne007
5.0 out of 5 stars I can't put these down!
Reviewed in Canada on September 28, 2020
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Patricia Highsmith is an extraordinary writer, very sensitive and making the very best use of little details to draw the reader in. I always read each story twice, to make sure I didn't miss any of the clues that lead to the conclusion. Highly recommended!
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WeAreWhatWeRead
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good, but these are not crime-and-suspense stories
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2017
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Bar very few, the short stories in this collection are far from the suspense genre people usually associate Highsmith with. The stories here are, however, excellent. Extraordinary, in fact, because they are, pretty much all of them, stories of sadness and show deep insight into all sorts of psychological upheaval, yet most were written when Highsmith was barely in her twenties. So it's amazing to see what a profound writer she was very early on, and also to see that her incredibly taught, economic writing style was there, it seems, from the very start.
The stories are, as I said, mostly sad, and quite a few are uncomfortable to read because of the subject matter, and lots of them deal with the smallness and boredom and utter joylessness of everyday life and with people so ordinary, they are almost painful to read about. So even though the writing is beautiful and sparkles, the effect overall will probably be that of a depressing read. (But nowhere near as depressing as anything by Flannery O'Connor, if that helps.)
6 people found this helpful
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PJB
4.0 out of 5 stars Patricia Highsmith
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2013
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Excellent collection of Highsmith short stories, many previously and unaccountably unpublished.If anything, the earlier stories (written I938 to 1949) are even better than the later ones.
5 people found this helpful
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mec
5.0 out of 5 stars Highsmith is Great
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2013
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If dark hunour is you thanh (and it is definately mine) then this is a book for you! A rip roaring read.
One person found this helpful
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Jacqui
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 11, 2016
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Good condition
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