Small g: A Summer Idyll
A Virago Modern Classic
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
Completed just months before Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995, Small g explores the labyrinthine intricacies of passion, sexuality, and jealousy in a charming tale of love misdirected.
'It has a serenity rarely found in Highsmith's world' GEOFFREY ELBORN, GUARDIAN
'What is most remarkable in this novel is the empathy . . . with which Highsmith writes about gay men' FRANCIS KING, SPECTATOR
'Like Ripley, [Highsmith's characters] burn in a reader's memory' LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
At the 'small g', a Zurich bar known for its not exclusively gay clientele, the lives of a small community are played out one summer.
Rickie Markwalder is a designer whose lover Petey was brutally murdered. Rickie and his performing dog Lulu are regulars at the bar, as are vindictive Renate, a seamstress, and her teenage apprentice Luisa. Into their lives comes Teddie, impressionable and beautiful, and a catalyst for the series of events that will change everything.
Patricia Highsmith's final novel is an intricate exploration of love and sexuality, the depths of spite and the triumph of human kindness. It is a work that, in the tradition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, shows us how bizarre and unpredictable love can be. Small g, in the words of her biographer Andrew Wilson, is an 'extended fairy tale suggesting that . . . happiness is precarious and . . . romance should be embraced'.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The last novel by this still underappreciated author, published here nine years after Highsmith's death, is a sour, mostly inert comedy of manners. In Zurich, Rickie Markwalder mourns his younger lover, Peter Ritter, stabbed to death late one night six months earlier. Accompanied by his small dog, Lulu, Rickie haunts a local bar called Jakob's, identified in guidebooks with a "small g" (for gay), hanging out with acquaintances. The bar draws a mixed crowd, most of whom are in love with people they shouldn't be (a familiar Highsmith theme). Renate, a club-footed, middle-aged atelier owner and her young employee Luisa are other regulars. Homophobic to the point of caricature, Renate despised Peter (upon whom Luisa had a crush) and despises Rickie. When a handsome young man, Teddie, comes to the bar, she and an associate set out to wreck any relationship he might develop with either Rickie or Luisa, both of whom are attracted to him. When Rickie and Luisa realize what Renate is trying to do, they make their own plans to punish her in return. While the narrative never flags, at no point does it take off. There are flashes of the author's wit, but much of the writing captures surfaces and nothing more, and Highsmith's remarkable observational powers are muffled. Although most of the characters are well drawn, Renate is simply too much of an ogre to serve as either a realistic threat or a foil, and the story suffers accordingly. Overall, this is a disappointing final note by one of our more interesting writers.
