PRIDE MONTH 2025! It would be woefully inadequate to describe novelist Patricia Highsmith as a problematic character. The author of Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series of novels, Highsmith was a person of appalling and unrepentantly anti-semitic and racist views. Outside of her psychological thrillers, however, she also wrote The Price of Salt, a landmark novel presenting a positive depiction of lesbian characters. Writer Grace Ellis and artist Hannah Templer’s admittedly rather cumbersomely titled Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith presents what can only be described as a fictionalised graphic biography of Highsmith, blending actuality and speculation to attempt to piece together the complexities of this deeply flawed individual.
Flung Out of Space takes place in a very specific window of time in Highsmith’s life at the beginning of her career. We observe the somewhat cynical and misanthropic Highsmith’s rise from comic book writer (including a supporting cast appearance by a certain Stan Lee) to aspiring author, and the often short-lived relationships with women she has along the way. The forward thrust of the plot, though, is the the lead-up to that seminal second novel. Ellis and Templer remind us that despite her notoriously outrageous stated opinions, and her somewhat bitter personality, with The Price of Salt (re-released decades later as Carol) Highsmith spoke to a generation of queer women. It was a seminal piece of writing that was game-changing in its portrayal of a lesbian relationship with, for the time, an unlikely happy ending.
Ellis’s depiction of Highsmith tells us more about her character through its dry understatement than a more exposition-led approach may have done. There’s a certain irony here too that given Highsmith’s apparent distaste for the comics she worked on Flung Out of Space is a quietly glorious testament to the sophistication of the form. Illustration-filled thought bubbles give us rare insights into the creative mind at work; a subdued use of colour leans heavily into the emotional core of the story; and the layouts of Templer’s period detail-rich pages constantly shift and melt into different forms to manipulate reader interaction with characters and events.
Flung Out of Space touches on multiple themes – queer identity in a time of overt suppression (now of course feeling more topical than ever), finding one’s voice as a creator, and the question of great work coming from dreadful human beings. But, crucially, it’s a fascinating projected history of the genesis of a pivotal work of queer fiction. Ellis and Templer’s partnership in that respect is sublime in both approach and delivery.
Grace Ellis (W), Hannah Templer (A) • Abrams/Surely, $24.99
Review by Andy Oliver
