patricia highsmith

What if Patricia Highsmith had written a spare trilogy about her growing up, as Tove Ditlevsen did, instead of these thriller tortures, these chilly people she has to invent in places she has visited, like Venice, Sorrento, Athens and Crete for The Talented Mr Ripley and The Two Faces of January?

Why does Patricia Highsmith need to invent psychotics abroad, while Tove Ditlevsen stays at home—call it that—and has not read Freud?

I would like to read three slim volumes on thick chalky paper written by Patricia Highsmith about growing up in Texas in the 1920s and 30s. Her diaries, all 8,000 pages of them, are due to be published next year. Beside that complex flood, the novels may start to look slim.