Small g: A Summer Idyll

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

Completed just months before Patricia Highsmiths 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 Highsmiths 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, [Highsmiths characters] burn in a readers 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 Highsmiths 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 Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights 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.