Joanna Murray-Smith

I think it's a brilliant book.

There's some red herrings along the way.

And of course, the talented Mr Ripley, the very best of the Ripley novels, is again, I think, a work of genius.

It is really, really brilliant.

In a way, all of her novels are quasi-autobiographical because she carries into them aspects both of her own, I'd say rather tormented character, and she borrows from people she knew quite well.

The diaries...

and notebooks and so on and so on that are currently still largely unpublished and are in archive in Switzerland are fascinating because they show us the private Patricia Highsmith.

She tends to enter in these things, aspects of her thoughts that she wouldn't perhaps disclose to other people.

But she also, in a most peculiar way, makes things up as if she's writing a novel.

It's almost as though she was rehearsing her fiction writing in her diaries.

Some of it is based on the observation of who she was and how she felt about others, real people.

And then she wanders in to the realm of pure fictionalization.