What a treat to have this book leap out at me from my bookshelves. There’s an attractive wickedness to these 17 little stories by Patricia Highsmith, as well as a delicacy and depth of expression. For example, take this spare but delicious sentence from The Victim

Vic almost threw the plate he was drying, but finally put it gently on top of a stack in the cupboard.

Many of the deaths have the quality of a deus ex-machina leaving the reader with another (untold) story to ponder… I’ll be on the lookout for more from this arch writer. Any recommendations? ( )

This book is a short collection of seventeen very short stories of Patricia Highsmith. Some of these would almost qualify to be considered flash fiction, only two or three pages in length. The entire book is only 134 pages long.

In typical Highsmith fashion, these tales contain elements of macabre, horror, mystery, thriller, and irony. A few are downright gruesome and a little frightening, especially the lead story, “The Hand,” in which a young man asks his girlfriend’s father for her hand ( in marriage) and is literally presented with her hand. Some of the stories are darkly funny.

While I enjoyed all of the stories, some of my favorite stories in the book are “The Coquette,” “The Invalid, or, The Bed-Ridden,” “The Breeder,” “The Fully-Licensed Whore, or, The Wife,” “The Silent mother-In-Law,” “The Prude,” and “The Perfectionist.” While some of the tales contain elements of misogyny, I did not find this to be a strong element in the book. Few of the male characters in the book were what would be considered misogynist in nature.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of stories and highly recommend it. ( )

After all the Highsmith I've read, I shd've known better than to've expected "Little Tales of Misogyny" to've been tales in wch MEN are the misogynists.. But, NO, I didn't expect the author's viewpoint to be misogynistic! Fool!

All sorts of catchy critic words spring to mind: "sardonic", "wicked", "wry", whatnot. The female characters just can't win - whatever they are, they're too much in one direction & most of them die untimely deaths b/c of it - often thru murder. These stories are SHORT - many just 2pp. Instead of the protracted subtle psychological deterioration that I've become accustomed to w/ Highsmith, these go straight for the womb-throat, cattily snapping the vagina dentata 'til the victim is properly shredded & baized. If Highsmith based any of these stories on people she knew she must've been a terror to be around. ( )

I was saving this collection for a rainy day, and yesterday – day 1 of a nasty, unexpected sinus infection – was exactly when I needed to read this weird little book. (I still have said blitzkrieg infection, so please don't expect too much from this review.)

This book is very short, as are the individual stories contained therein. As for the misogyny of the title, it puts me in mind of Virginia Woolf's ponderings in A Room Of One's Own when she was asked to speak about women and fiction. Does that mean women and the fiction that's written about them, or the fiction that women read, or the fiction they write, or a combination of all of these, or something else altogether?

Similarly, even after reading this book, I have no idea if saying that these are little tales of misogyny means that the author hates women and has written stories to reflect that hatred, or if these are simply tales about misogyny. And if it's that last one, are these stories that celebrate misogyny, or that merely reflect it? Or could they be both?

And how is all of this complicated by the fact that the author in question is not only a woman herself, but one who was at least bisexual and possibly best described as a lesbian?

I probably wouldn't be able to figure all that out even if I were well. With my head stuffed up the way it is now, there's no chance.

All I know is I burned through this book and wish I were well enough to go to the library to get more of Highsmith's stories.

This is one of those pass/fail books. There's no room for neutrality here. You'll either eat these stories up like potato chips, or you'll be left cold and possibly repulsed by them.

Or you might do all of the above. Because as I mentioned, this is a weird, weird little book.
( )

One piano went through the roof, a bit separated from the student who was still seated on the stool, fingering nothing. A dancer at last made a few complete revolutions without her feet touching the ground because she was a quarter of a mile high, and her toes were even pointing skyward. An art student was flung through a wall, his brush poised, ready to make the master stroke as he floated horizontally towards a true oblivion.

According to the back cover blurb, this Penguin 60 'contains seventeen menacing spine-chillers full of simmering malice' in its 90 pages. I'd agree about the malice, but seeing the characters get their comeuppance is amusing rather than scary, so I didn't find them the least bit spine-chilling.

Most badly-behaved woman: Thea in "The Perfect Little Lady"
Most sympathetic man: Douglas in "The Breeder"
Most spine-chilling moment: the end of "The Mobile Bed-Object"
Most surreal scene: the exploding art school in "The Artist" ( )

It does just what it says on the cover. The book is around 120 pages, and each story is between 2-6 pages long, with most falling in the 2-4 page range.

Each story takes a different female stereotype and tells a little tale about the life of that woman, usually from her point of view, though sometimes the story sympathizes with the husband et al. All are told with an extreme sense of humor, which normally stays firmly on the side of satire, but doesn't hesitate to go over-the-top when necessary (in one memorable instance, an art school is blown up and the students are described as still doing their various activities while flying through the air).

The stereotypes/caricatures are very exaggerated and generally hilarious. There's a female writer who neglects her husband and personal life in order to exaggerate it and add sordid details in the book she's working on, a woman who lives a happy life where she is "traded" among rich men, there's a wife who tricks her husband and neglects birth control until they have a family of 14 children... you get the idea.

I read this after "Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder," and unlike in that collection, the women don't always die in the end, nor do they necessarily come out any worse for wear in some cases. I was laughing at the extremely twisted sense of humor the entire time I was reading it, and enjoyed it immensely. ( )