Those Who Walk Away: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics) - Softcover

Highsmith, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349004862 ISBN 13: 9780349004860

Publisher: Virago, 2014

Synopsis

'The setting is Venice, the characterisation brilliant, the syle spare and superb' Daily Mail

The honeymoon is over; the bride dead by her own hand. Ray Garrett, the grieving husband, convinces the police in Rome of his innocence, but not his father-in-law, Ed Coleman, who shoots him at point-blank range and leaves him for dead. Ray survives and follows Coleman to Venice, where the two fall into an eerie game of cat-and-mouse - Coleman obsessed with vengeance and Ray determined to save his reputation, and himself. Each is at once the hunter and the hunted in a tense duel that, as each manages to walk away, draws them nearer to death.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Review

Praise for Those Who Walk Away:

“For me, the name ‘Patricia Highsmith’ designates a sacred territory: she is the One whose place among writers is that which Spinoza held for Gilles Deleuze (a ‘Christ among philosophers’) . . . [A] masterpiece.”―Slavoj Žižek, London Review of Books

Absorbing . . . illuminating and always compelling.” Anthony Boucher, New York Times Book Review

[Ray and Coleman] are among the most memorable products of Highsmith’s powerful imagination . . . The deadly games of pursuit . . . are as subtle and interesting as anything being done in the novel today.” Julian Symons, Times Literary Supplement

The novel has many virtues, including a stunning sense of place and a fascinating cast of characters.” Pauline Mayer, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Praise for Patricia Highsmith:

“One of the 20th-century’s most powerful writers . . . [Highsmith] transcended the workaday limitations of the crime genre with an array of erotic predators and stylish plot-reversals. She wrote unpretentiously . . . and with profound psychological insight.”―Alexander Theroux, Wall Street Journal

[Highsmith’s] characters are irrational, and they leap to life in their very lack of reason . . . Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear.” Graham Greene

For some obscure reason, one of our greatest modernist writers, Patricia Highsmith, has been thought of in her own land as a writer of thrillers. She is both. She is certainly one of the most interesting writers of this dismal century.” Gore Vidal

Miss Highsmith’s genius is in presenting fantasy’s paradox: successes are not what they seem . . . Where in the traditional fairy tale the heroine turns the toad into a prince, in Miss Highsmith’s fables the prince becomes a toad success is nearly always fatal . . . Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction a reflection the stories are fabulous, in all the senses of that word.” Paul Theroux

She writes so fearlessly . . . about human relationships and the human heart. I always have this terrible sense of foreboding . . . you never feel safe.” Cate Blanchett

Patricia Highsmith’s novels are peerlessly disturbing bad dreams that keep us restless and thrashing for the rest of the night.” Terrence Rafferty, New Yorker

These days, just about all the exciting work in the murder-for-entertainment business descends not from Arthur Conan Doyle or Hammett but from Highsmith.” Atlantic

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0349004862
• ISBN 13: 9780349004860
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272