Some people think of her as the Carol lady, others know her as the The Talented Mr. Ripley lady, but I'll always think of her as the snail lady. Thank you Wikipedia. (Patricia Highsmith--Personal Life--paragraph 7--you're welcome.) In every Highsmith short story collection I've explored it seems there was at least one story that was somewhat on the experimental side, and in reading Mermaids I couldn't help but feel that I was always just one story away from a real clunker. It happened with Eleven and Slowly, Slowly in the Wind and so it was with dread that I made my way through this collection. But the clunker did not come. Give me Angry, Nasty People--that's all I ask.

Mermaids on the Golf Course - 4
The Button - 5
Where the Action Is - 4
Chris's Last Party - 3
A Clock Ticks at Christmas - 3
A Shot from Nowhere - 5
The Stuff of Madness - 5
Not in This Life, Maybe the Next - 3
I'm Not As Efficient As Other People - 3
The Cruelest Month - 4
The Romantic - 336 s Paul Bryant2,292 10.7k

I believe there’s a central casting bureau for imaginary characters somewhere in another dimension. All these different types hanging around, animals too, waiting for a call over the PA system – “Elderly Hungarian professor, dazzling blonde and two crippled children to reception please”. The imaginary characters never go home, they have no homes, they’re imaginary. So they hang around the bureau and gossip. Rumours go round – this or that author is good, take any job they offer, they pay well and you probably get to have sex. Because, you know, the imaginary characters have desires, needs, and rights, and they can turn jobs down if they don’t fancy them. They're not cattle. (Moo!) One pretty fixed rule they have is – don’t get involved with Patricia Highsmith, especially don't find yourself in one of her short stories. It won’t be a good experience for you, trust me darling, just say no.

This collection is a fair indication of why. People wake up in hospitals a lot in this book. In fact it seems that the only ones that donÂ’t are the successful suicides.


short-stories34 s BrokenTune755 216

“Good news,” said the doctor. “She’s going to pull through nicely. An infarction, and she’ll have to lie still in hospital for at least ten days, but by tomorrow you can visit …” Christopher felt depressed at the news, though he said the right things.

Mermaids on the Golf Course is a collection of Highsmith's short stories, and if there was only one word I would choose to describe her stories, that word would be - unsettling.

Highsmith's stories deal with madness and obsession which is bottled up and desperately tries to find an outlet. Whether this is successful and to what extend the characters cope or do not cope with this is what makes Highsmith's stories compelling and terrifying in equal measures.

Ralph realized that it was the RalstonsÂ’ eternal bustling and efficient presence and proximity in the country that was gnawing at him far more than the loss of Jane. The Ralstons had the strange power to make him feel a worm.

There are eleven short stories in this collection, all of which had me in thoughts about how the characters internalised their anxieties, fears, hates, and other emotions. There is little dialogue between the characters in the stories because there is little interaction by the main characters. The main characters really do draw all of the reader's focus in these stories, but not in a way that allows you to empathise. It's more of a standing by and watching the train wreck unravel, because one of the most compelling aspects of the stories is that they are not predictable.

My favourite, if I had to pick one, in this collection is The Cruelest Month, in which a fanatic reader uses a holiday with a friend to seek out one of her favourite authors. The story is full of cringe-worthy moments. It made me think of Misery, a lot. It also made me think of stalkers and the boundaries between fans and stalkers, and a line from Oasis' Don't Look Back In Anger (not sure why):

Her soul slides away, but don't look back in anger I heard you say
Take me to the place where you go
Where nobody knows if it's night or day
But please don't put your life in the hands
Of a Rock n Roll band
Who'll throw it all away

Of course, another reason I d this particular story is that Highsmith pays tribute, in her won sardonic way (and which I bet he appreciated), to Graham Greene. Highsmith's central character keeps writing letters to Greene but cannot understand why she does not receive a single reply.

In real life, Highsmith and Greene never met, but they were admirers of each others work. Greene very astutely described her work in his foreword to Highsmiths short story collection Eleven when he summarised that:

Miss Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear. Fear after a time, as we all learned in the Blitz, is narcotic, it can lull one by fatigue into sleep, but apprehension nags at the nerves gently and inescapably. We have to learn to live with it.

As you may know, I am a bit of a Greene fan, so the reference in the story jumped out at me, but I was also considering that there are a few similarities between Greene and Highsmith with respect to the fictional "worlds" they created. Whereas, Greene-land as I to call it, was dark, bleak but also filled with humanity (even if it seemed to be a failing humanity), Highsmith's realms are often, tho atmospheric, of a nature that is less tangible because it deals with thought processes and emotions that are, not harder to follow, but that are a little more fragile.

She walked back towards the town of Little Starr in a daze of shame and confusion. He had detested her! And she had nourished a fantasy of being invited in for a cup of tea, invited to take a look at the desk where he worked! Odile felt that she had just made the worst social gaffe of her life. She had intruded, a piece of riffraff off the street!reviewed27 s Krista1,469 723

Minderquist had been going to indulge in a little fantasy about mermaids on the golf course, but he noticed a murmur among the assembled, as if the journalists were consulting one another. Mermaids who graced the links and flipped their tails to send the balls to a more convenient position for the golfer, Minderquist had been going to say, but suddenly three people put questions to him at once.
In the title story of Mermaids on the Golf Course, quoted above, an advisor to the President of the United States shielded his boss' body during an assassination attempt – taking a bullet to the brain and apparently removing the self-control mechanisms that stopped him from acting out perverse impulses. And I can see why that became the title story of this collection: throughout, we see characters acting on impulses that most of us have in control (if we have them at all) – impulses to harm ourselves and others, to be unfaithful partners, to literally and figuratively tear our houses down around ourselves. Patrica Highsmith is most famous for creating the character of (the talented) Mr. Ripley, and while most of us aren't that brand of sociopath, the characters she writes into these short stories are just familiar enough to make the reader uncomfortable; to want to scan oneself and one's familiars for these proper mechanisms of control. Ultimately, these stories seemed a bit repetitive read all at once, but for a short collection, they entertainingly whiled away the hours.

Repetitive these stories are: several characters try to kill themselves (jumping into a gorge, taking pills, stepping in front of a taxi), and in addition to poor Minderquist up there and his lobotomy-by-bullet, characters are forever suffering head injuries and coming back to swimmy consciousness:

He woke up to a soft roar of voices that sounded a sea, blinked his eyes and recognized the faces bending over him...Then suddenly Andrew was on the ridged floor. He had almost fainted, had lost his balance, and now the two policemen were hauling him back on to bench...When Ralph was next aware of consciousness, or of thought, he seemed to be floating, weightless, horizontal perhaps, and on his back...Odile woke to find herself lying on her back in a bed, and she felt pain all along the right side of her head and face. She lifted her right hand, and her fingertips encountered thick bandages that extended under her chin.
There's not a lot of dialogue in these stories, so we're stuck in the mind of a father who finds his son with Down's syndrome “monstrous”, in the mind of a young photographer who milks his “lucky photo” of a rape victim for fame and fortune, in the mind of a man who is secretly pleased when his wife has a heart attack; these are not easy to characters. And as with fainting or getting knocked on one's head, these stories are mostly about how easy it is to lose control – to quickly veer from loving to despising one's partner; to kill a man impulsively; to walk towards rejection and turn away from happiness. Often, I couldn't understand these characters' motivations – and especially their reversals against self-interest – but Highsmith's philosophy seems to be summed up in this quote from the second last story, The Cruelest Month:

Life was nothing but trying for something, followed by disappointment, and people kept on moving, doing what they had to do, serving – what? And whom?
When life is pretty much meaningless, why should meaning be ascribed to people's actions? Fun stuff. There's nothing really deep here, and the repetition of themes were probably of more interest to Highsmith to write than for me to read, so I'm going with three stars.2019 short-stories6 s S.P. ArunaAuthor 3 books76

Still plowing through my Pat High kindle collection.

This is another bundle of 11 short stories

The title is taken from the first story, about a politico not quite himself after being shot in the head, and whose enhanced lusty feelings get the better of him.

Then we have:
A story of a father who relieves himself of the bitterness of having a mentally disabled son in a most gruesome way.
A photographer who achieves fame with a photo of a rape victim,
A dying elderly actor throwing a party so he could die happy,
A marriage exposed as a failure from just one simple incident - a stolen clock,
A young American who witnesses a murder in mexico and is arrested for it,
A couple whose garden is populated with their stuffed deceased pets
A woman haunted by a dwarfish phantom in her house
The downfall of an obsessive-compulsive young man.
A lonely middle-aged woman whose only meaning in life is being a 'fangirl'
A young girl is searching for romance, or is she?

Although this compilation was much more satisfying than Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes, I have come to the conclusion that the genius of Highsmith lies in her novelsthriller-mystery6 s Scribble Orca213 385 Read

Vintage Highsmith.

To employ that so serviceable (and now updated) turn-of-phrase, workperson prose hammering out not-too-exotic people and places (but nonetheless the gamut of the spectrum, as would be expected in the short story format) caught in a moment of crime-time or ethical misdemeanour. Generally unique plots consistently revolve(r) around creating a sympathy for the villain, one way or the other, which may or may not substitute for "being in the mind" of a real-life (or wannabe) perpetrator, depending on the motivation of the reader, but simply just seemed, on the whole, not insightful and rather more trite. That is to say, given the circumstances of each short story, one could imagine the realism presented, but somehow reality always intruded in the form of a nod to ostentatious plausibility ie its presence suggesting the absence of such.

6 s David Anderson234 47

Highsmith proves to be equally skillful (if not more) at writing short stories as she is at novels. Some of these are as creepy as any of Harlan Ellison's best short stories. I especially d "A Shot from Nowhere" (a young painter sojourning in Mexico witnesses the murder in the street of a young boy), "The Stuff of Madness" (wife of a successful lawyer drives him to the edge with her penchant for putting the stuffed versions of her deceased pets on display, so he stages a bizarre display of his own), and Not in This Life, Maybe the Next" (a widow is visited by a strange but seemingly harmless gnome- creature only she can see). Highly recommended. 4 s AndyAuthor 16 books143

The story about the nutty woman who has all her dead pets stuffed and mounted in her garden and her pissed off husband is worth the price of the book. The other stories are equally brilliant. If you those early Siouxsie & The Banshees records Carcass and Suburban Relapse then you'll love these wild tales of mental disintegration.3 s Parisa Bookworm80 63

???the stuff of madness ???? ?????? ???? short-stories2 s Mario221 50

Los libros de relatos suelen llamarse igual que aquel que es más redondo, que mejor le salió al autor o autora. En este caso, el relato que da nombre al libro es bueno, pero no el mejor en mi opinión.
Hay que aclarar que yo creía que esto era una novela. Una investigación previa demasiado exhaustiva no debí llevar a cabo cuando al leerlo me encontré con un libro de relatos, un género que no leo apenas porque prefiero las historias largas, engancharme a una durante muchas páginas y seguir así hasta la última página del libro.

Aun así, no era mala opción. En el instituto me obligaron a leer El talento de Mr. Ripley y me encantó. Así que, tratándose de la misma autora, ¿por qué no probar? Ahora que lo he terminado puedo decir que son buenos relatos, pero no llegan al nivel de Ripley, ni mucho menos.

En el primero de ellos, del cual recibe nombre el libro, el protagonista se llama Ken. Han intentado asesinar al presidente de Estados Unidos, pero la bala la ha recibido este hombre, que era su consejero económico y que ha quedado tocado mentalmente. Narrado en tercera persona, nos adentramos en la rutina de Ken el día de su cumpleaños, cuando un grupo de periodistas asistirá a entrevistarle a su casa.

El título procede de unas visiones que parece tener Ken, ya que ve sirenas en el campo de golf al que asiste ocasionalmente a jugar al golf. Desde el accidente ve todo más confuso o malinterpreta aquello que ve. Por ejemplo, ve en los ojos de una de las periodistas un intento de coqueteo y seducción por su parte. Sin embargo, este relato tiene poco más donde rascar y termina sin hacer ruido.

Quizás mi relato favorito fue el siguiente. Una pareja que vivía en armonía ha tenido un hijo, pero este ha nacido con síndrome de Down. Está narrado desde la visión de Roland, el padre, que ve cómo desde el nacimiento del niño su mujer no le presta atención a él y sus amigos se han distanciado de ellos a raíz del nacimiento de su hijo mongólico —así se le llama en el libro, no por maldad, sino porque hasta 1958 no se llamó síndrome de Down a esta enfermedad; hasta entonces se les llamaban niños mongólicos o enfermos de idiocia—.

Llegó un momento en que Roland pensó en matar al pequeño y se preguntó qué había hecho él para merecer un hijo así. Su actitud es aborrecible, aunque hay que tener en cuenta la época en la que se desarrolla el relato, cuando incluso se ocultaba a las personas de diferentes capacidades en las casas, sobre todo en los pueblos. Para desahogarse, sale una noche de paseo, encuentra a un hombre y lo asesina. Y fin. El relato es muy bueno al comienzo, pero al final pierde fuelle y termina sin pena ni gloria.

Con respecto al asesinado, se nos dice en el relato que puede tratarse de un hombre español. Cuando Roland lo asesina, nos lo describe como un hombre bajo y grueso. Luego, dirá que ha escuchado decir que hay españoles rubios, lo que parece toda una rareza y que me resulta un alarde de supremacía aria por parte de la autora. Y más aún teniendo en cuenta lo que decía la revista Jot Down sobre Patricia Highsmith en un artículo (https://www.jotdown.es/2020/03/que-gr...). Sea como fuere, este es en mi opinión el mejor relato, y aun así no brilla demasiado.

Unos días después de terminar este libro di con un reportaje del famoso cronista y escritor español Nacho Carretero —autor de Fariña— sobre su tía Chus, una mujer con síndrome de Down (https://revistaorsai.com/mi-tia-chus-...). Me encantó leerlo, me pareció muy enternecedor y creo que su lectura sería recomendable para el protagonista de la historia, Roland, aunque realmente creo que cualquier persona debería leerlo.
Luego, hay varios relatos: sobre ética periodística y los beneficios que puede reportar un contenido, aunque sea mentira, la homosexualidad masculina, el destino y el karma, la violencia callejera en México —al que Highsmith retrata como un país atrasado con un calor abrasador y un cuerpo policial rígido e inflexible—, la caridad de mano de una mujer adinerada de París...

Hay personajes muy bien construidos pese a la brevedad de los cuentos, algo que ya demostró Highsmith que sabía hacer muy bien con Ripley y compañía. Y todas las historias son, a priori, buenas, pero terminan con finales planos que las desmerecen. También me ha llamado la atención la presencia del suicidio en todos los relatos. De los once relatos del libro, en cinco de ellos aparece el suicidio, en alguno como simple pensamiento o, en su mayoría, llevados a cabo por alguno de los personajes principales o secundarios.

Todo suele girar en torno a las relaciones sentimentales o familiares, con algún toque de muerte, depresión, envidia, infidelidad y mucho para reflexionar. Incluso aparece un relato fantástico sobre una mujer que de un día para otro ve un monstruo pequeño que se ofrece a hacer tareas del hogar (!).

Hay que admitir que Highsmith escribe muy bien. Sus obras más notables son la saga de Ripley, Extraños en un tren y Carol. Por esa razón es interesante inmiscuirse de vez en cuando en libros no tan célebres o que recojan relatos cortos, porque ahí se concentra muchas veces la verdadera personalidad literaria del autor o autora.20202 s FP494 43

Una serie de cuentos sobre personas supuestamente normales ante situaciones reveladoras de su verdadera personalidad. La verdad es que yo discutiría seriamente el rótulo de "normales": muchos de ellos parecen a sólo un paso del suicidio. Como sea, son historias en su mayoría tensas, pero creo que Highsmith desarrolla mejor la trama en las novelas; en estos cuentos, son los personajes los que destacan más que las historias.2 s Leo RobertsonAuthor 37 books476

Some of her more obscure stories—the meanings are coolly opaque, deserving of a second read—though they do ramble a bit!2 s Mahmoud Amr81 4

Even though its not my cup of tea at all, the amount of tumultuous raw emotions this story collection made me feel is undescribable. This is not a review.2 s Enea219 39

Un libro de cuentos ominoso.
Me gustaría escribir así; buenas descripciones, construcciones sólidas de los personajes, prosa sencilla.
En algunos hay giros extraños no completamente de terror. En otros no hay giros, solamente una decantación patética, a veces triste.
En todos, los personajes son cotidianos, un poco grises. A veces explotan a medias, a veces sus existencias cambian a medias pero nada termina siendo completamente extraordinario, nada más allá de lo posible. Esta muy bien manejado el suspense. Claro, porque es ella no?
Mis favoritos: “El botón”, “Sustancia de locura”, “La romántica”, “Un disparo de la nada”.
1 Beatrice419 208

A collection of short stories which are as depressing as James Joyce's Dubliners but feature weirdos instead of apathetic people.collection1 Sonali V184 79

I have read all the Ripley novels and two others by Highsmith. This is the first collection of her short stories I read. Highsmith has not disappointed me ever. The stories are eerie du Maurier 's, sometimes I found myself waiting for a strange twist Dahl' s.. But they are different, unexpected certainly, but in a different way than the other writers I mentioned. Loneliness makes people behave in strange ways, loneliness when a person is really by themselves or even when they are with their spouses, or with acquaintances. Loneliness leads to lack of confidence, to self-harm, but also sometimes to a certain comfort with one's own company, an acceptance of self. I found the first story quite nasty, in the bluff over-confidence of the character and the way others especially the women, of all ages, react to him. I enjoyed all the stories, but especially about the teacher who enjoys reading novels & then writing to the authors which actually leads to a mishap which shapes her future life. Also the last story about a young office stenographer choosing what to do with a date.1 Tj137 10

What is not a good idea? Reading a depressing collection of short stories during a recession and you're unemployed.

Granted I recognized the writing as good, I kind of had to slog through it. Highsmith's world is full of crazy people, who are having trouble dealing with the world. But not too crazy. In fact they are probably only slightly crazier than you are. Which is what is probably the creepiest about it1 Vivian53 10

Los correctores de estilo de Anagrama en los 90 odiaban a su jefe con una pasión lenta, insidiosa y erratosa.1 erna znam33 3

11 short stories about utter weirdos to identify with.perfect1 Clare Walker345 20

I love this author.1 July C. B797 22

Aclaración: uso este libro para reseñar los cuentos Sirenas en el campo de golf y El cementerio misterioso porque no encuentro en Goodreads ediciones individuales de estas historias.

El cementerio misterioso: 4,5 estrellas.

Creo que tengo que prepararme para que todo lo que lea de esta autora tenga ese toque de rareza tan particular. Por ejemplo, este cuento comienza con unos hongos gigantes que empiezan a crecer en un cementerio, que alcanzan alturas de unos dos metros y se convierten en una plaga. Luego vamos viendo el motivo del surgimiento de estos hongos, y qué hará ahora el gobierno con ellos.

Con esa premisa, la autora me ha hecho reflexionar bastante sobre dos cosas:

—Las personas que, escudándose bajo la creencia de que están haciendo un “bien mayor”, se aprovechan de los indefensos, de gente pobre o sin muchos recursos. Es algo que ha sucedido, y sigue sucediendo, en el ámbito de la medicina, donde a veces personas carentes de ética usan excusas como que “quieren aprender más sobre una enfermedad para encontrar la cura” para experimentar con personas inocentes, causándoles graves daños.

—¿Cómo reparamos el daño que los humanos hacemos todo el tiempo? Generalmente, los culpables se lavan las manos, y unos pocos quedan con la tarea de arreglar el desastre causado. En este cuento, el gobierno gasta mucho dinero y recursos para acabar con los hongos, pero la situación parece estar fuera de sus manos, y luego no saben qué hacer con todos los desechos. Sin ir muy lejos, este es uno de los grandes problemas de la modernidad: estamos destruyendo el planeta, escudándonos en excusas y pretextos. El daño es tan grande que los gobiernos y la población no sabemos ni siquiera cómo empezar a repararlo, mucho menos qué hacer con todos nuestros desechos.

No sé si esta es la visión y la intención de Patricia Highsmith al escribir el cuento, pero me encanta que una historia tan corta y extraña como El cementerio misterioso me haya llevado a tales reflexiones.


Sirenas en el campo de golf: 3,5 estrellas.

Desequilibrio e inestabilidad, esa es la sensación que se mantiene durante todo el relato.

Algo no está del todo bien con los personajes, especialmente con el protagonista, a pesar de que él crea estar bien. Y la esposa sabe exactamente qué está mal con él, e intenta encubrirlo. Eso lo hace aún más creepy si es posible.00-2018 00-2018-09-septiembre 01-short-story-cuento ...more azuu13

"Sirenas en el campo de golf", una novela de Patricia Highsmith.
Fue el primer libro que leí de esta autora y me sorprendió mucho. Lo compré usado, a nada considerando los precios exorbitantes de los libros populares.

Generalmente, las antologías de historias cortas no son lo mío, pero este libro me cautivó con la fluidez de la prosa y la inquietud que comienza con la primera letra y no afloja hasta el final. La mezcla de crimen, misterio y obsesiones psicológicas con lo cotidiano está tan elegantemente escrita que parece un relato que verdaderamente ocurrió, y Highsmith lo hace creer sin objeciones a sus lectores.

No hubo una historia que verdaderamente no me haya gustado, aunque hay algunas que sobresalieron completamente, como "El Botón", "Un tiro desde ninguna parte", "El material de la locura" o "No en esta vida, tal vez en la próxima".

Si tuviera que compararla con otro autor, sería Murakami. La distorsión despiadada de los enfoques psicológicos de los protagonistas es algo que adoro, personalmente.


favorites grubby magical-realism ...more Greg2,006 18

"It didn't matter anymore" is a killer final line from one story, and I'd have chosen that as the title of this solid collection. The world has changed in the past year, and a lot doesn't matter anymore. We just don't have to care about a lot of things now and it's actually liberating. Receive a subpeona? Trash it. Another housing market crash? Just walk away again. Are you ill? Doesn't matter, go party, spread your disease! As far as story and structure, "A Shot from Nowhere" is very good. "The Romantic" is Highsmith admitting perhaps a personal fault in relationships. But frankly, I don't much give a damn about anything anymore. most people. Hey, I might just put something on a t-shirt, the classic "You must be confusing me with someone who gives a fuck."20th-century reviewed short-story-collection1 Ginette Doyle121 2

A series of 11 short stories this was an interesting book. Some of the stories left you pondering about a conclusion, others were entire in themselves. I particularly enjoyed the cruellest month, where a young girl, having been stood up on a date sees the beauty of being able to sit in a bar, waiting and watching, undisturbed by others - this she finds preferable to an actual date. An interesting selection, if, in places somewhat unsatisfying. Magnus StankeAuthor 4 books34

Another collection of Highsmith short stories, certainly not her best. While she moves out of her comfort zone in some of the stories they don't improve as a result of it and the overall tone is pretty dour and depressing. In about half of the stories suicide is on the protagonist's mind and some of them are successful at it. I'm not shrink but I wouldn't be surprised if this says something about the author's state of mind at the time.
One for Highsmith completists. Isaac Lambert390 4

overall a fun read, but some of the stories feel a bit incomplete. lots of affairs, deaths of parents, unhappy marriages, hospital stays. touching darkness, but often not enough.

by far my favorite story was 'The Stuff of Madness'- as I d the weirdness, and share some similar traits with Penelope
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