“STRANGE, WISE AND DELICIOUSLY DISTURBING”
HIGHSMITH, Patricia. Mermaids on the Golf Course and Other Stories. London: Heinemann, (1985). Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. $425.
First edition of Highsmith’s collected stories, the sixth of seven collections published in her lifetime. True first edition, preceding the first American edition by three years.
The stories in this collection are "in Grace Paley's phrase, about enormous changes at the last moment. They deal in one way or another with people whose well-set lives have been breached, their boundaries disrupted, and who are now retrenching" (Boston Review). Patricia Highsmith "has a genius for describing the impulse to kill without justifying or even pretending to fully comprehend it." Hers is a "strange, wise and deliciously disturbing cosmology (Los Angeles Times). Precedes the first American edition by three years.
A fine copy.