Book Notices | Mermaids on the Golf course by Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith, Mermaids on the Golf Course

Amazon   I enjoyed this batch of eleven short stories by Patricia Highsmith more than I did the last collection of hers that I read (The Black House), though I can't offhand say exactly why. These stories, not surprisingly, feature mostly unhappy—or soon to be unhappy—people. They are driven to murder or suicide, or they realize that their ostensibly happy relationships were a mirage. They seek an escape from loneliness in imaginary dates, imaginary (?) friends, and nearly imaginary penpals. "Life was nothing but trying for something," Highsmith writes toward the end of "The Cruelest Month," "followed by disappointment, and people kept on moving, doing what they had to do, serving—what? And whom?" That about sums up the hopelessness a lot of the characters experience in these pages. So, the book isn't a lot of laughs, and the stories aren't really suspenseful, as much of Highsmith's writing is, but I did enjoy reading them.