I couldn't get interested in this book. The writing was fine, but not outstanding or particularly interesting. The plot was good enough (I did not finish the book though), but not original or woven in a way that grabbed me. The characters were the biggest let down. Ripley should have been a fascinating psychological study but was actually very one dimensional. I just didn't care what happened to him-- and the murders didn't offend me or shock me or anything. I do agree that the book does not seem dated and has aged well. This might be a good airplane or vacation read but wasn't what I was hoping for personally. ( )

Some writers lead you gently into their plot & setting. They let you amble a bit, getting familiar with where you are & who you're with before they get down to business. It's like being at a cocktail party with a socially skilled hostess who escorts you, introduces you, & provides some conversation starters before leaving to fend for yourself. Patricia Highsmith is not interested in being a good hostess. In this book you are plopped down into Tom Ripley's world & essentially told to sink or swim. You should swim. It's an interesting world.

I came to this book via the Anthony Minghella film. The film was wonderful in its own way - good acting, good writing, good setting, good music, great cinematography. I generally hate it when people turn books into movies because they often do it so poorly, but this is a good version of the book, although different in some aspects. The performance in the film that really sticks with me is that of Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Miles - a minor character in the book who is more fleshed out in the movie to, I thought, good effect. Hoffman's entrance in the film is breathtaking - driving up in his fiat convertible, climbing out over the hood, all predatory sleaze & sexiness. Amazing.

The thing the film does poorly is Tom Ripley. In the film, Tom kills Dickie Greenleaf because he is a closeted homosexual who has fallen in love with Dickie & Dickie rejects him. The plot diverges further by giving Tom a different (& true) male lover who he ends up having to kill because of his game of pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf. This makes for a nice tidy Hollywood story, but the real one, the story in the book is so much chillier & more real. You see, Tom doesn't kill Dickie because he wants to be with Dickie. Tom kills Dickie because he wants to BE Dickie - & he does it admirably well.

Highsmith didn't believe in tidy moral endings & one is not provided in this novel (to its overall benefit, frankly). Rather, Highsmith builds a complex portrait of a very blank person. Tom Ripley isn't much of anything or anyone - there's no there there. He is a cipher, an actor on the stage of life performing for his supper & taking up roles as they suit his need. When given the chance to assume Dickie's good life - his wealth, his social ease, his Gucci luggage - Tom jumps at the chance. It's wonderful in its own twisted way & beautifully handled by this author.

The lack of a tidy moral ending may give some readers pause - after all, we're used to our fictional criminals being punished in various ways (cf., Hannibal Lecter). For me this is one of the major strengths of the book & in a way made it all more plausible. Think of how many crimes must be committed in any given place on any given day & how many of those crimes go undetected or unpunished. Being caught & being convicted, despite all of our wonderful science, frequently comes down to some combination of skill & luck & Tom has both in abundance. You find yourself cheering him on & that's maybe the most disturbing thing of all because Tom really isn't a very nice person. He's not much of a person at all.

Where Tom & his interior monologue is all blank & flat & gray, the world of objects (the Gucci bag, Dickie's blue-and-white striped shirt, the art books Tom is able to purchase with Dickie's money) is super real as is Italy & all the rest of Europe. Tom's awareness of his physical surroundings is deep & intense & the descriptions of Italy & of Paris are colorful & rich & warm in all the ways Tom is not.

This is a deceptively simple read that is hiding something complex & interesting. Highly recommended. ( )

An amazing book. It didn't seem dated at all, just felt completely modern. It certainly inspires me to read the rest of the sinister Ripley tales. Brilliant. ( )

This nail-biting page-turner is the first of Patricia Highsmith's novels featuring amoral, mass-murdering sociopath and all-around bon vivant Tom Ripley.

What can I add to the generations of praise heaped on Highsmith's male alter ego? What else need be said? What delicious evil, what glamourous grue, and told with such economy of language!

Well, for one thing, Tom's as bent as a bow, and because the book came out (!) in 1955 it wasn't possible to say frankly that he was *that way* and so was Dickie (!!) Greenleaf and Marge was a big ol' fag hag and Daddy Greenleaf was sending Tom to Italy in hopes that a cute boy would succeed where a revolted father failed to convince his queer son to return to a soul-killing life of pretending to be straight.

And now that I'v delivered the post-Stonewallization of the book, I return to the text as presented.

The characters are all deftly drawn to present us their essences in a short burst: Tom cruising bars and letting an older man (Pa Greenleaf) pick him up; Dickie resisting Tom's charm until Marge, acting as wing man, throws them together; Marge then doing the twist as she sees her efforts rewarded with too much success. It's all done in 30pp and it's set from there on, so suspense has to be created with audacity on the writer's part. We're drawn into Tom's troublingly untroubled world of crime, we're seduced into seeing the problems of Tom's murders from his point of view as puzzles to be solved in order to protect his now-customary lifestyle.

It's a very difficult feat to pull off. It's even more amazing when one considers the author, a big ol' dyke, was writing in one of Murrica's most homophobic AND law-and-order obsessed eras. Highsmith, from all reports an unpleasant person to know, does this difficult balancing act with an assured hand at the storytelling tiller and a character-compass that pointed true north at all times. This is high quality storytelling, done in simple, unadorned prose. It is very much recommended and it's worth your time. ( )

The Talented Mr Ripley is about a man who attempts to take over the identity of one of his friends. The whole thing goes squirrelly on him and he ends up murdering his friend. In attempting to get out of that, he must commit another one. So he portrays himself and his friend to different people at different times and puts a lot of stress upon himself. The book was very interesting as there were a great deal of tangles and twists that Mr. Ripley must get himself out of or explain away. The whole thing was rather incredulous but very intriguing.
The story takes place in Europe and I found the descriptions of the locales and the lifestyles rather interesting.
It was a very quick page turner of a read and I liked it well enough that I will read the others in the Ripley series. I don't think it is for everyone but it was a very pleasant change for me. The book was much easier to read than the movie was to watch. ( )