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Lead book review

A glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith through her diaries and notebooks

Through her diaries and notebooks we finally catch a glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith, says Christopher Priest

4 December 2021

9:00 AM

4 December 2021

9:00 AM

Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1995 edited by Anna von Planta

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp.1024, 30

There are three ways of knowing Patricia Highsmith. First, of course, she was the author of 22 novels and several story collections published between 1950 and 1995, the year of her death. Then the woman herself: Mary Patricia Plangman, born in Dallas in 1921, long-term resident of New York City, when young a socially and sexually active lesbian, later in life a mostly solitary literary figure in almost constant movement around Europe.

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