The Talented Mr. Ripley

One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, Ripley works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him through a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fiction making and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers to empathise with him even as his actions defy all moral standards.

The novel begins with a play on James's The Ambassadors. Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends all moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs.

Unlike many modernist "experiments", The Talented Mr. Ripley is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated manoeuvres of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lechter.-- Patrick O'Kelley

View other editions of The Talented Mr. Ripley.
View books by Patricia Highsmith.

The nature of a psychopath - Rated
The nature of a psychopath carefully and agonisingly dissected by the incomparable Patricia Highsmith. Her particular gift is to get deep inside her character, Tom Ripley and lay before us the thinking and actions of a man deep in the throes of delusion and ego-worship.

Content with petty, even pointless frauds and deceptions after escaping life with his miserable Aunt in the USA, an accident of friendship brings a peculiar mission his way. When the anxious father of Dickie Greenleaf approaches Tom in a bar he agrees to go to Italy where Greenleaf is happily spending his inheritance and whiling away his life in the sun. Tom's mission is to persuade Dickie to come home with a view to taking his place in the family business. Once in Italy Tom discovers that Dickie has no intention of returning to the USA. Together they conspire to extract further funds from Mr Greenleaf - but the mercurial Dickie tires of his new companion and things begin to go horribly wrong.

What is amazing about this book is that you find yourself wanting Tom to succeed. The unpicking of events from Tom's point of view is so pervasive and persuasive that you begin to see what he sees and identify with him. This is strange and rather creepy, but the book does not recognise any other point of view. For the space of the book, in fact, you experience everything from the psychopath's viewpoint. Once you accept that the first murder was part accident, part despair on Tom's part, you are lost within the workings of a terrible nightmare of a plot. Riveting stuff.

Is this book dated? - Rated
I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. In it, an American chancer (Tom Ripley) is asked to travel to Italy to try and convince an acquaintance (Richard Greenleaf, who is presented as a sort of sponger who lives off his trust fund by his father) to return to the US and live the life expected of the American working middle class in the 1950s, which is when this book is set.

The problem is that once he's there Ripley falls in love with Greenleaf's life himself. Ripley is superficially charming but isn't the sort of person you like if you know him in a profound way, so he decides to kill Greenleaf and assume his life because they look so similar physically.

From there Ripley has to use his skills as a chancer to convince:

1) People he's Greenleaf, so he can have Greenleaf's money.

2) The police that Greenleaf is safe (and then up to no good when he can't live as Greenleaf any more).

3) Greenleaf's family and former love interest that he really cares about Greenleaf.

So why do I feel this book is so dated? Ignoring the fact that there is no forensic trail for the Italians to follow, or the fact that there are no computers, what is it first thing that the police do these days when someone goes missing? They investigate the last person to see him. That doesn't happen here. Ripley is taken at his word all the time, when even the simplest investigation of him would have shown him to be a liar. That irritates me no end. To my mind the book might be better described as The Fortunate Mr Ripley because he certainly road his luck in this book.

If you can live with this issue read this book, you'll like it. If you can't, I probably wouldn't bother with this book. It might irritate you.

Ripley gets away with it . . . - Rated
. . . because the Italian police he comes up against are so unutterably stupid. Honestly! Two men hire a boat. The boat is later found scuttled and one of the two men is never seen again. But no hint of suspicion falls upon the other - who, we are asked to believe - is now impersonating the dead one! Then, when Ripley as Greenleaf encounters folk who knew Greenleaf as Greenleaf he has to switch in and out of his two personae like a Whitehall farce. And even when (as Ripley) he is found wearing Greenleaf's clothes, and again as Ripley, hoarding Greenleaf's bling, the rest of the cast always fall for his "Oh, well - I guess Greenleaf must have committed suicide!" Except Freddie. No review can do justice to the sheer inanity of Freddie's murder and subsequent corpse disposal technique. Ms.Highsmith - like the execrable Agatha Christie - doesn't understand how difficult it is to kill people with blunt instruments. (Compare Ripley disposing of Freddie with the corpse disposal sequences in Ian McEwan's "The Innocents". McEwan knows how to do grisly, how to do difficult/tiring . . . ) Do all those five star reviewers really find the gigantic mish-mash of pie-in-the-sky plotting remotely credible? Did they really enjoy the endless "Tom thought . . .", "Tom wondered . . " , "Tom feared . . ." - a narrative technique forced on us by the writer because Ripley is secretive and introverted and so can have no "Dr.Watson" or "Captain Hastings" to 'talk' his thought processes to? And whatever else Highsmith isn't, she certainly isn't a stylist. The book reads like a very long explanation of the plot of a story she will get round to writing one day

A good read, a likeable character, perhaps too many things left unsaid... - Rated
Most reviewers, I feel, have it spot on when they say that this book has a certain detached air and is certainly very elegantly written. The character of Tom Ripley is a fascinating one but I found there were many areas where things were left too open-ended; we were suggested certain character traits but they never seemed fully developed.

I do disagree with some reviews stating that this novel moves at breakneck speed - it really doesn't - though to be fair I doubt that the novelist intended for this to be a mile-a-minute read.

I found the book very enjoyable and I think most people will too but I personally didn't find the depth that many others did and that was certainly hinted at times during the novel. A classic? Perhaps not quite in my eyes though, a good read - certainly.

Top five in the crime genre - Rated
This is not the best crime novel I have read but not far from it. However, Ripley is certainly the most fascinating character; complex, charmer, man for all seasons, seeks love & affection but on his own terms, sexually ambiguous, human chameleon, socialite and a sympathetic amoral killer.

Ms Highsmith creates a superb tension where the reader ends up praying Ripley doesn't make a slip and get caught. Ultimately,there is no hint of punishment or redemption in a modern, grown up novel that is decades ahead of its time.

Read it in a single sitting but why isn't Ms Highsmith more celebrated and widely read?