The Talented Mr. Ripley

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating...
Review: My interest in the Thomas Ripley saga was first piqued by the movie of the same name which was quite fun to watch. But the power of the book lies in what Matt Damon cannot, despite his superb acting, illumine: what is happening inside Ripley's mind.
The book begins by establishing Ripley's character, and some of his past, and continues on to the story of how impoverished Tom Ripley hobnobs with the wealthy Dickie Greenleaf, murders him, assumes Dickie's identity, and escapes the clutches of justice, if barely. The story itself is rivetting, rife with detail that brings Europe alive. But the most fascinating part is the case study into the mind of a nihilist, and I feel this work to be on par with the another great study of nihilism: Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment".
Bottom line: read it, but don't expect the movie.

Rating:
Summary: Splendid psycho/sexual study of a sociopath
Review: Patricia Highsmith, one of the grande dames of the mystery genre, as usual transcends that genre in this meticulously wrought study of a sociopath. The action is set in Europe in the fifties, mostly Italy, at a time when the Yankee dollar bought a whole lot of cappuccino, and an American accent still commanded some respect. In her intense exploration of the 25-year-old Tom Ripley, Highsmith implicitly asks the question: Is the difference between a sociopath and a "normal" person only a matter of degree, or is there a distinct difference between "us" and "them"?

First published in 1955, The Talented Mr. Ripley has since been made into a couple of excellent movies, the first a Hitchcockian venture by French director Rene Clement entitled Plein Soleil "Purple Moon" (1960) and recently the interpretation by Anthony Minghella using Highsmith's title. Neither picture was entirely faithful to Highsmith's novel, yet both caught the spirit of the sexually ambiguous Tom Ripley, who might more properly be called, "The Murderous Mr. Ripley."

In effect, Highsmith asks, is Ripley's love of self so complete and exclusive that it precludes any other love? Note that his love for the rich and spoiled Dickie Greenleaf takes form as a step by step assumption of Dickie's life and personality. It is only when he becomes Dickie that Ripley is able to love Dickie and thereby to love himself. In other words, to love himself Tom Ripley must destroy the self-loathing that he has always felt. He does this by becoming Dickie Greenleaf and assuming Dickie's witty, confident personality and all the accoutrements of wealth, leisure and status that Dickie enjoys. While we note Ripley's repulsive feelings toward Marge and a kind of identification and interest in gay men, an interest that Dickie finds disgusting--witness the scene on the beach with the men making human pyramids--our answer to the simplistic question, is Tom Ripley gay? is...not really, and anyway it doesn't matter. He is interested only in loving himself, and finding ways to do that.

There is a strong sense of the psychoanalytic approach in Highsmith's somewhat euphemistic study, which is not surprising considering that the 1950s were perhaps the heyday of Freudian analysis and suppositions, at least in the popular culture. The movie Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Robert Lindner's popular, The Fifty Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytical Tales (1954) come quickly to mind, and Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was not far off. But Highsmith does not allow us to draw any set conclusions about her anti-hero.

The ending is disturbingly ironic and daring, surprising both us and the slippery Mr. Ripley.

Rating:
Summary: AWARD CALIBER READING
Review: If you were entranced by the cinema version of this fascinating study, prepare to be thrilled again with Patricia Highsmith's inimitable prose as delivered by the talented Michael Hayden.

Miraculously, he injects Tom with just the right amounts of menace and charm as we are gradually introduced to the amoral young man with a gift for ingratiation and mimicry. Obsessed is too weak a word to describe Tom's desire to be someone else - someone with money and all the world has to offer.

A suspenseful tale plus a romp through some of this Earth's most glamorous spots.

Rating:
Summary: Mystery noir
Review: Patricia Highsmith's noir novel from the 1950s, The Talented Mr. Ripley, first of several Ripley-related novels, had new life breathed into it by the release this past year of the Matt Damon/Jude Law vehicle in the cinema. Unfortunately for Highsmith, the theatrical release is merely a 'based-upon', for the characters and the events do turn out to be different in the novel.

The basic plot is this. Henry Greenleaf, upset that his son Richard (Dickie) has abandoned responsibility in life to live a life of decadence in Italy, hires Tom Ripley to go and persuade Dickie to return to America. Ripley, being down on his luck, sees this as the opportunity for travel and some ease, at least for a while. He agrees (somewhat under false pretenses) and meets up with Dickie and his friend Marge in Mongibello.

Eventually, Tom comes to appreciate the lifestyle (to which has become accustomed) more than his desire to complete his mission, and begins with Dickie's help to conspire to continue the cash flow from Greenleaf, Sr. while Dickie has no intentions of returning to America.

Marge and Dickie's other friend, Freddie, don't entirely like the distraction of Tom, as all seem to be competing for the always-short-attention-span of Dickie. Dickie in the end is easily bored, and not entirely trusting of the intentions of Tom's interest--did it go to more than mere friendship? Marge suspected it. Dickie let Tom know that.

Tom in the end decides to kill Dickie, and take his place. It would be simple, Tom thinks. If only one can figure out how to accomplish the murder. Tom kills Dickie in a boat, disposes of the body overboard, and simply steps into his shoes. As Dickie had the habit of ignoring people and travelling alone for lengths of time, he kept up a correspondence and double-life as Ripley and Greenleaf, but soon the search is on, particularly after Freddie is also murdered, and his body is discovered. The police want to interview Greenleaf for the murder, and in fact the same detective interviews Tom as Ripley and as Greenleaf at different times, and Tom's impersonation is sufficient to carry off the masquerade.

Through a series of near-misses, he finally convinces all that Dickie has either disappeared intentionally or committed suicide, perhaps out of guilt of Freddie Miles' murder. Marge buys into the lie, as do the Greenleaf, Srs., who comply with the final wishes of Dickie's will, and hand all of his money over to Tom.

Very different from the movie in many respects. This novel being a product of the 1950s, the idea of a homosexual orientation both had to be masked and had to be sinister. This is true of the novel, a little less so in the film. In the film, Tom has intentions of impersonating Dickie from the outset, which is not true in the book. In the film, Tom commits a murder aboard ship of someone with whom he has fallen in love; this is not true in the book. In the film, Marge suspects to the end that Tom is guilty of disposing of Dickie; this is not true in the book.

Thus, I hope I am proving the point that you must read the book. The character development is much more interesting and complete (and somewhat different) than the film's exposition. This book is very much a product of the 1950s, and in what is really a classic mystery novel, Highsmith has produced a character as chilling a sociopath as any modern serial killer, made the more sinister by the way in which we get drawn in to his actions and motivations almost willingly.

Rating:
Summary: Sympathetic Psychopath
Review: After I saw the film, "The Talented Mr. Ripley", I was anxious to read the book for two reason. First of all, I had been very impressed with the delicate manner in which Anthony Mangela reworked "The English Patient" into film, so I was curious to see if he had done so here as well. Secondly, I loved the idea of the story and was curious about the writer.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a wonderful novel on several levels. It is different, it is highly suspenseful and in its own way it is believable. Did I come away from the book believing that anyone could get away with so bold and complex a crime? No. Did I find Tom Ripley to be a believable character? Absolutely.

Highsmith's gift in part is to make us empathize with Tom Ripley. In a subtle and understated way, we are drawn to Tom Ripley. While his motives and actions may be morally repellent, his feelings and judgment are oddly agreeable. His crummy friends in New York remind me of the crummy friends that I could not wait to abandon there. His sense of purpose and his deliberate role playing on the journey to Italy are probably common to every young man on his first major voyage. Ripley's attitude and experience have enough in common with us that we are drawn in. We are drawn in to the point that we eventually realize with a start that we are empathizing with a premeditated murderer.

Highsmith does not make a social commentary about the potential killer in all of us. Instead, she adds enough common touches to the killer to make us become his unwitting sympathizers.

The book also serves as a refreshing travelogue. Highsmith is clearly well traveled and she uses her experiences well. In the hands of a less adept writer, Ripley would have been annoying and the tone of the book too pretentious. As it were, Highsmith writes with great subtlety and skill.

Mangela's adaptation of the book departs significantly from the original. Never the less, it is as authentic and well made as his adaptation of "The English Patient".

Rating:
Summary: The Talented Patricia Highsmith
Review: Ever since seeing the movie version several years ago, I have always wanted to read the novel. I am someone who believes that the book is always better than the movie. And the same is true with "The Talented Mr. Ripley." I truly think that Anthony Mingella's film was well-made, but there are so many nuances to Tom Ripley's character that could never receive justice on film.

Highsmith tells the story of the utterly forgettable Thomas Ripley, a young man who yearns for wealth and prestige to the extent that he schemes his way through life. A golden opportunity comes along when he is tracked down by the father of Richard "Dickie" Greenleaf. Dickie's father pays Tom to travel to Italy to force his wayward son to come home. Tom sets out to fulfill this plan, but on meeting Dickie, he becomes too enthralled with his lifestyle, that he helps Dickie elude his father even more. Tom is happy in paradise, or so it would see. He loves Dickie's life so much (and perhaps Dickie himself) that he would do anything to have his lifestyle - including murder.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley" is a detailed character study of an unlikeable character. Readers are meant to dislike Tom for all the reasons that other characters do, as does Tom himself. Yet at the same time, Tom grows on the reader because we want to know what happens to him. Even as he winds himself further and further into trouble, we want to know how he'll be able to get out of it. Tom himself finds his situation unbelievable; rarely admitting to himself that the bad deeds he has done are real. He keeps waiting for his luck to run out. So do we.

Rating:
Summary: AWARD CALIBER READING
Review: If you were entranced by the cinema version of this fascinating study, prepare to be thrilled again with Patricia Highsmith's inimitable prose as delivered by the talented Michael Hayden.

Miraculously, he injects Tom with just the right amounts of menace and charm as we are gradually introduced to the amoral young man with a gift for ingratiation and mimicry. Obsessed is too weak a word to describe Tom's desire to be someone else - someone with money and all the world has to offer.

A suspenseful tale plus a romp through some of this Earth's most glamorous spots.

Rating:
Summary: Nail-biting entertainment
Review: Tom Ripley is a likeable sociopath whose misfortune it is to find himself too frequently in circumstances in which murder is, if not necessary, at least desirable. And Patricia Highsmith is a suspense writer who could make you bite your nails just reading about a woman setting the table. Read The Talented Mr. Ripley, and then read the rest of the Ripley books and a bunch of other Highsmith novels. (My favorite is A Suspension of Mercy.) Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest of all crime novels
Review: The superiority of Patricia Highsmith's novel to the recent Anthony Minghella film adaptation of it almost goes without saying: the homoerotic subtext of the film is here (unsurprisingly) laid bare, making the novel infintely richer aned more disturbing. Highsmith's novel is really a disquisittion on how identities are constructed: by objects, by friends, by official papers, and above all by writing. Part of its genius is bringing you inside Tom Ripley's very strange little mind so that his murders, by the time they occur, seem thoroughly logical and almost justifiable (which is part of Highsmith's moral genius). It's also a brilliant study of the manners of wealthy Americans abroad during the postwar period.

Rating:
Summary: What a guy!
Review: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith

This is the novel in which Patricia Highsmith introduces to the world her most famous character: one of the craftiest creepiest sociopaths to grace the book world and the silver screen, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tom Ripley is asked by business tycoon Herbert Greenleaf to track down his son Richard, who is living the high life in Italy and refuses to come home. Herbert takes to the unassuming Ripley, entrusting him with some money and some information on Dickie, and asks to be kept informed on his progress of his mission.

Ripley, who is feeling bored out of his skull at the moment, sees this as an opportunity he cannot ignore. Off to Italy he goes in search of the missing son. Once he finds Dickie, Ripley finds that he is attracted to Dickie and soon is obsessed in his need to be with Dickie, to be just like Dickie, at whatever cost. He also feels revulsion towards the female friend that is Dickie's companion in Italy, Marge. Marge is obviously attracted to Dickie, but Ripley does not see this being reciprocated and does his best to get Marge out of the way so he can have Dickie all to himself.

Ripley and Dickie seem to have a budding friendship developing but it doesn't end quite the way Ripley would have liked it. He soon finds the need to get rid of Dickie, and during a boating expedition, Ripley murders Dickie, hiding the body along a deserted rocky beach and sinking the boat into the waters.

From then on, Ripley masterminds a cover up, which involves him assuming Dickie Greenleaf's identity. He's able to hide the death from Marge, who is constantly trying to find a way to reach Dickie. Dickie's father also comes to Italy to look for Dickie, but Ripley is always able to find ways to cover up the disappearance. Another death, which involves Ripley, has the police sniffing around, and it's a game to him as Ripley does his best to keep a few steps ahead of them.

Patricia Highsmith was a genius to have created such a character as Tom Ripley. He is a multifaceted person that learns to fool the average person into believing he is someone else. He's able to con people into believing in him, and is able to take on different personalities to get his way. One needs to read THE TALENED MR. RIPLEY to fully understand the character that is Tom Ripley, and why he is such a detestable creature. And whether Ripley gets caught for the murder of Dickie Greenleaf is up to the reader to find out! A highly recommended murder thriller, this is a must-read book. I gave it 5 stars.