Brilliant, suspenseful, original ( )

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. ( )

This was my first Highsmith novel, and it has much to recommend it.

Tom Ripley is approached in a New York City bar by Herbert Greenleaf, a wealthy father despairing that his son Dickie will ever return from Italy and take up the life of a responsible adult. Ripley, who has a slight acquaintance with Dickie and is also indulging in small time income tax collection fraud, senses his opportunity to live a playboy life on the back initially of the money Greenleaf senior has allowed him for expenses.

However, Dickie and his girlfriend Marge don't much care for Tom initially, although Tom's revelation to Dickie that he's fleecing his father thaws relations between the two of them quickly. Unfortunately for Tom, it is destined not to last, especially after Marge catches him dressing up in Dickie's clothes, and Tom must take increasingly drastic action to keep himself in the style to which he has become accustomed.

Although classed as a thriller, it seemed to me this novel breaks many of the genre's conventions, not least the fact that here we have a highly amoral character portrayed in a non-judgemental way. If anything, by portraying Tom's taste for fine art and good food Highsmith invites us to think Ripley a better man than those in the circles in which he now gets to move.

Also, there's no mystery - we are told who committed the crimes, why and how they have rationalised their actions to themselves. The tension comes from seeing if and how they will get away with them. In addition, and what must have been shocking to a mid-1950s audience, are the strong hints of Tom's romantic attraction to Dickie.

Yes, it has moments where one has to suspend disbelief, but, frankly, a lot of thrillers do. You don't read Chandler for the plots. Nevertheless, the result is an atmospheric and slickly written slow burner and an excellent example of the genre. ( )

brilliant! but creepy. ( )

This novel was part of my effort to somewhat upgrade the quality of my reading list. This book was listed as one of the "100 Essentials for Everyman's Library". While it was entertaining enough, it was tedious at times and thus the three star rating.

Best I can tell, the novel is set in the 1930s, first in New York, then in Italy. The style is similar to that used by Herman Wouk in "Youngblood Hawke" and "Marjorie Morningstar", and like the latter, the idiosyncratic language and customes of the period began to rankle after awhile.

At its heart, the novel follows Thomas Ripley, an amoral, sexually confused, mentally disturbed wastrel as he evolves from a freeloading fraud into a psychopathic murderer. Unhappy with the circumstances of his existence, he takes on the personalities and the trappings of the more successful and admired American vagabonds with whom he comes into contact. Though moderately entertaining, the book starts relatively slowly, ramps up near midway through, then runs out of steam near the end. Not a complete waste of time, but certainly not deserving of designation as a classic. ( )

Après les deux films qui en ont été faits, ce roman est devenu culte! J'avais déjà vu le film avec Matt Damon, Jude Law et Gweneth Paltrow, mais malgré le fait que je connaissais la fin, je me suis quand même laissé mener par l'intrigue, les paysages de la Méditerrannée et le dénouement alors que les fils se resserrent autour du meurtrier. Délicieusement amoral, ce mystère vaut sa réputation! ( )

A classic - in which a man who has no sense of connection to other people (other than rampant jealousy) becomes a murderer. A curious, ice-cold novel.

This is very like the movie with Matt Damon and Jude Law. I thought at that time that Damon was miscast, though I did enjoy the movie. And on reading the book, you can see he is not at all what Highsmith had in mind, though Jude Law is perfect casting. Fun read about the devious machinations of a cold-blooded killer. For Tom Ripley crime does pay and murder pays more ( )

This is quite simply one of the best crime novels I've ever read. I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it, and it really surprised me since it changes tone several times throughout the story.

The first part features Tom Ripley as an unemployed con artist with a somewhat bitter outlook on his life. To be fair, while he does con, he doesn't cash in on his cons, and he moves on to better things when the father of an acquaintance sends him to Europe to convince his son to come back and take over the family business.

Then the second part of the novel starts, which is beautiful in its ability to portray awkward social situations extremely well. Tom Ripley finds his acquaintance (named Dickey) and goes through several phases of relationship with him while they live together, passing the time leisurely in a small town in Italy. A woman complicates things, and eventually things get worse and worse.

Later, he strikes out on his own and lives the life of a comfortable heir with plenty of money and the ability to do basically whatever he wants. Later, things get bad while he has to weasel his way out of several bad situations.

The character of Ripley himself was also a large part of why I enjoyed this so much. He's deranged in a not-quite-evil way, and you can see the logic behind everything he does. He's an extremely vivid character, and I'm more than willing to read the rest of the novels in the series just to see him in action again. ( )

This is a wonderful suspense novel; I loved it! Tom Ripley is a pathetic young man, with few obvious opportunities ahead of him. Not surprisingly, he jumps at the chance to travel all expenses paid to Italy in order to convince an old school acquaintance, Dickie Greenleaf, to return to the states. While in Italy, he falls in love with Dickie's lifestyle, dreaming of the same thing for himself. Ripley pushes his way into Dickie's life, hoping to become the focus of his attention, but when Dickie becomes bored of him, Ripley murders him and assumes his identity. What makes the book so great is the way that the reader begins empathizing with Ripley, a morally repugnant sociopath, understanding the reasons behind his misdeeds, recongnizing the potential killer in all of us. As an added benefit, the book also serves nicely as an Italian travelogue. The movie is a faithful adaptation to the novel, so those having seen the movie already may be disappointed with the book, but I highly recommend it regardless. ( )

Highsmith does a superb job of putting you inside Tom Ripley’s head as he tries to take Dickie Greenleaf's place, which makes him the quintessential anti-hero. I wanted him to succeed because of where Highsmith puts the point of view, but at the same time he is despicable and I wanted him to get his. Every encounter with another character heightens the tension. Will Tom be able to pull this off? Will he convince the tourists he meets that he’s Dickie?

This is one messed up book, and because of that it is pretty damn good.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

I can't remember what picqued my interest to read this book. More than likely I checked it in or out at the library where I work and made a mental note to check it out. Years ago I saw the movie; I can't remember much about it other than my being rather creeped out by it.

Welp... the book effectively creeped me out, too!

For the most part, it seems the movie folowed the novel fairly well... at least to a point. I'll have to watch the movie again to be able to discuss that more accurately. While I read the book, I couldn't help but to picture Matt Damon as Tom Ripley, Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Miles. I think they were cast well.

This review is supposed to be about the book, not the movie; let me try to get back on track!

Patricia Highsmith definitely did a good job of catching my attention and keeping me on the edge of my seat. I can't remember the last time a book held me in such suspense! Even to the very last page, I found myself wondering what was going to happen next.

I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series! ( )

I love stories like this. The idle rich are fascinating because it’s a world I’ll most likely never know. Certainly I’ll never know the world of transcontinental rail travel as it was done before the airplane. Same with the luxury cruises that Ripley takes on his quest. The gentility of it all; renting houses in Italy (complete with servants), being able to take off at a moment’s notice to say, Paris.

In the end, Tom succeeds in making people think Dickie committed suicide. When the fake will Tom typed himself is taken as genuine, he inherits everything Dickie had and can now truly live the life he took from Dickie.

One thing that struck me as conflicting is the fact that while Tom does these things all right, he questions himself relentlessly and lives in fear afterward. He doesn’t really like Dickie’s girlfriend, but yet goes out of his way to accommodate her and keep her involved in what illegalities he has committed. It seems odd that for someone with such nerve, he should keep wondering about whether or not he’s done the right thing and can get away with it. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being illegally reposted here.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I attempt over the next two years to read a hundred so-called "classic" novels for the first time, then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label

This week: "The Ripley Trilogy," by Patricia Highsmith (1955-1972)
Review #5 of this essay series

The story in a nutshell:
Known collectively as the "Ripley Trilogy," these three small novels by Patricia Highsmith tell the ongoing tale of one Tom Ripley, one of the more fascinating characters in the entirety of 20th-century literature. (And note, by the way, that Highsmith would go on to pen even two more books about Ripley after this original trilogy; the five-book series is now known by its fans as the "Ripliad.") Charming sociopath, vicious murderer, with a hyper-specific set of ethics that make sense only to him, Ripley and his exploits virtually defined the burgeoning "crime fiction" genre at its beginning, and helped define many of its standards right when it was just starting to become the marketplace juggernaut it still is in America and elsewhere.

That said, I think most will agree that the original 1955 novel that started them all, The Talented Mr Ripley, is far and away the best of the entire series: a look at the young Ripley in his mid-twenties, heading to Europe for the first time, and the experiences that would turn him for good from a "harmless" sociopathic con-artist into the cold-blooded killer he is in the other four books. It's a great little story, in fact, that I won't get into detail concerning so as to not ruin it for you; a story that very clearly defines many of the aspects we now take so much for granted in crime fiction, wrapped in an ingeniously dark plot regarding resort-hopping in Europe with the jet-set during the aesthetic height of the Modernist era. In contrast, then, both Ripley Under Ground and Ripley's Game (set in the same 1970s when they were written) find Ripley himself at a softer middle-age, ensconced in small-town bourgeoisie French life and leaving the "action" part of the crime plots mostly up to others now.

The argument for it being a classic:
As you can probably guess, fans of the Ripley stories claim that they virtually defined the crime genre that now accounts for more book sales in the US than any other type of book that exists; as such, they argue, the books should rightly be considered classics, despite their relatively young age and genre status. And for sure, a different group of activists would argue, the original '55 Talented Mr Ripley was also one of the first mainstream American novels to tackle the issue of homosexuality in a complex and multifaceted way; indeed, Highsmith was known for this subject throughout the length of her career, as well as being a public and practicing bisexual in her real life. It's a stretch for now, even her fans concede, to consider these in the same breath as Great Expectations and the like; the main argument comes from her most diehard fans, frankly, and I think is more about trying to establish how the future and posterity are going to look at the series.

The argument against:
"Really? Crime books from the 1970s? Included in the classical canon of all Western Civilization? Seriously?" I think that's pretty much the main argument against these being a classic, summed up in a smartass nutshell -- that they are simply too new, concern too niche a subject, and in the end are simply not written well-enough to be seriously considered classics, or at least for now. As is the case with a lot of books on the CCLaP 100 list, in fact, even its critics I think would agree that the Ripley books are at least well-written, and still very entertaining to just sit down and read; a strong argument can be made, though, that these books shouldn't nearly be considered by society at large as "books to read before you die."

My verdict:
I have to confess, I ended up with this whole screwed-up story behind trying to read these: I got through the first, The Talented Mr Ripley, fairly quickly and straight-forwardly (mostly because of already being a big fan of the 1999 movie version starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett and a whole lot more cool famous people), but then accidentally read the third book (Ripley's Game) instead of the second (Ripley Under Ground), and didn't really like it so never bothered to read the third (er, second...ugh). But ultimately it doesn't matter, like I said, because it's the first book that really stands out here; I want to make that clear, in fact, that The Talented Mr Ripley is still quite the engripping little yarn, both the book and movie form, despite me not willing to endorse it as a "classic." Ultimately Highsmith does something incredibly smart here in this first story, as far as exploring such dark topics as sociopathy and bisexuality in an age where you could get in real trouble for talking about such stuff too explicitly; she instead turns the subjects inward towards Ripley himself, and shows how it is certain core parts of his personality that manifest such easily-labeled behaviors afterwards, not vice-versa.

In the first novel, in fact, it's hard to definitively state that Ripley has a sexual orientation at all; it's more that he's simply obsessed with the idea of pleasing the people around him at all times, this desperate yearning inside of him to make sure that everyone else is having a good time, in any way that he can provide that. In effect it provides for some really great homoerotically-charged scenes between Ripley and his future victim, globetrotting badboy Dickie Greenleaf, without anything explicitly sexual being said or done; combined with all the cat-and-mouse stuff that happens concerning the ensuing crimes themselves, you can see why so many thousands of authors in the decades since have gone on to copy things from Highsmith in their own crime novels, or copy things from people who copied things from Highsmith.

But alas, that's why my interest dropped so suddenly after the second novel, and why I say that the other two books of the trilogy are essentially interchangeable; because it was by then 20 years later in Highsmith's career, a point when crime fiction really had taken off and become its own booming little industry, and Highsmith was already starting to look at the Ripley character in terms of a franchise-friendly little cash cow. The Ripley of both Under Ground and Game (and presumably the two after those as well) is a fatter, slower, more complacent middle-age Ripley, who mostly now masterminds white-collar crimes as to maintain his provincial middle-class antique-laden lifestyle in a medieval village in France, now in a happy if not passionless marriage and no longer under any particular pressure to have a sexual preference at all. Each book, then, concerns yet another special time where Ripley is called out of this environment, to go on some crazy violence-filled escapade just like from his troubled youth, in many cases with someone else altogether now being the one doing most of the running around and stabbing and garrotting and the like.

Bleh. Skip the ensuing franchise, I say, and simply read the original instead, the strongest argument there is for Ripley to be considered part of the Canon. Oh, and do make sure to see the '99 movie adaptation as well, a truly excellent one that on top of everything else just happened to be directed by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient).

Is it a classic? No ( )

It had me sitting on the edge of my seat. ( )

The engaging novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, is a quirky crime thriller. Highsmith dismisses with many of the traditional aspects of the crime thriller and presents the amoral criminal, one Tom Ripley, from the inside out. From the very first page of the novel you are sharing the thoughts of Tom as he looks over his shoulder expecting the police to emerge from the shadows to take him away. As the novel ends, he is still looking over his shoulder, so to speak, as he imagines the gendarmes awaiting at whatever European port he is approaching. In between the reader shares the roller coaster ride as this intriguing criminal assumes the identity of young American Dickie Greenleaf, an expatriate whom he has been sent to coax home by Greenleaf's father. Assuming Greenleaf's identity involves Tom in murder and more as he travels from Rome to Palermo to Venice to escape those searching for the missing American. Highsmith demonstrates both psychological acuity and brilliant logic in her portrayal of one of the most likable of amoral and irrational criminals ever imagined. Her writing style is superb and you are disappointed that the tale must end. Fortunately she went on to write four subsequent novels starring the talented Mr. Ripley. ( )

I just finished The talented Mr. Ripley and I wanted to like this book more than I did. I found it a bit slow in places and really drawn out. Which is a pity because I know people review this book well. I also found it odd that no one caught one that when ripley disappeared Greenleaf was there, and when Greenleaf dissapeared Ripley reappeared. HMM - I would notice right away. But, perhaps I have an overly suspicious mind.

Good, not the best 'Ripley' book. ( )

With Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith created one of the more memorable sociopath serial killers of fictional history. And, despite the fact that parts of her plot are not quite believable, The Talented Mr. Ripley, written in 1955, has to be considered a classic crime novel.

Tom Ripley was not the kind of man who was willing to work hard for the finer things that he felt that life owed him. Rather, he found it enjoyable to manipulate those around him into giving him some of those things and, if that didn't work, he was more than willing to take those things however he could get them. When Dickie Greenleaf's father asked Ripley to go to Italy in an attempt to talk his son into returning to the family's New York business, Ripley immediately recognized an opportunity to escape his unhappy New York existence at the expense of someone else. Unfortunately, for Dickie Greenleaf, Tom fell in love with Greenleaf's European lifestyle and decided to take that for his own, too.

Patricia Highsmith achieved the difficult task of making the reader, at the very least, sympathize with Tom Ripley, if not actually like him. The reader spends so much time in Ripley's mind, listening to his logic, his fears and his aspirations, that his murders and other crimes seem almost inevitable and beyond his control. He is a true sociopath and has no feelings of guilt about killing when he thinks it is necessary to ensure the lifestyle that he sees as due him. His feeling of invincibility allows him to take chances that a sane person would never take, and he gets away with fantastic crimes as a result. That is where Highsmith's plot loses a few points for not being totally believable: Tom Ripley easily passes for Dickie Greenleaf even when using Greenleaf's passport and being interviewed by the same Italian policeman as both "Dickie" and later as "Tom," Greenleaf's parents accept a forged will in favor of Tom despite the fact that it is not witnessed and a New York bank has questioned recent signatures of their son, and Tom's fingerprints are assumed to be that of the real Dickie Greenleaf when Greenleaf's personal belongings are found in Venice near where Tom is living.

But really these are minor quibbles when placed against what Highsmith achieved in this novel. One suspects that the plot details were always secondary to her and that her goal was to create an unforgettably horrific character like Tom Ripley. And, in that, she was completely successful. In fact, Highsmith eventually returned to the Tom Ripley character for several more novels that I look forward to reading.

Rated at: 4.5 ( )

This is a chilling portrayal of the mind of a young man becoming a serial killer. Paranoia, hypersensitivity, narcissism, entitlement, envy, longing, rage, and pain crowd the mind of Tom Ripley as he inserts himself into the lives of well-heeled acquaintances in southern Italy. His inadequacies and mis-readings of the people around him would be funny if they didn't create such pain in his life and eventually lead him to consider and then commit horrible crimes.

This is a suspenseful, brilliant, chilling page-turner which I recommend highly. ( )

much better than the film ( )