The Talented Mr. Ripley

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Overview

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a "sissy" by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante. A dark reworking of Henry James's The Ambassadors, The Talented Mr. Ripley—immortalized in the 1998 film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gywneth Paltrow—is an unforgettable introduction to this debonair confidence man, whose talent for self-invention and calculated murder is chronicled in four subsequent novels.

Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, Tom Ripley travels to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly like him. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil.

Editorial Reviews

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Talented, Sick, and Wonderful

The late Patricia Highsmith was one of the great crime novelists of the 20th century. In her case, though, the term "crime novelist" seems unfairly limiting. She was first and foremost a novelist, and utilized stories of crime and violence to support her complex examinations of character and her acute observations of the debilitating effects of guilt, boredom, and domestic unhappiness on otherwise unremarkable lives. Born in Texas in 1921, Highsmith spent most of her life as a European expatriate, an experience that informed her fiction in a number of ways. During the course of her career, which spanned nearly 50 years, she produced 7 collections of short stories and more than 20 novels, some of which, ironically, are now better known for the film adaptations they inspired.

Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was brilliantly filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Her third and -- by many accounts -- best book, The Talented Mr. Ripley, has now been filmed twice. The first version, "Purple Noon," appeared in 1966. It was directed by René Clement and starred Alain Delon as the enterprising Tom Ripley. The latest version, just released in time for Oscar consideration, stars Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow and has been directed by Oscar winner Anthony Mingella (The English Patient). It is one of the more anticipated movies of the season and provides a convenient pretext for a look back at the original novel and its underappreciated creator.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, which won an Edgar award as Best Novel of 1956, was the first of five books to feature the eponymous con man, Tom Ripley. As the story begins, Tom is a 23-year-old loser living a hand-to-mouth existence in New York City. A liar and inveterate role-player with vague aspirations to a better life, he drifts aimlessly from job to job and from scheme to scheme, surviving largely through the sufferance of his friends. With his latest scheme -- impersonating an agent of the Internal Revenue Service -- he has crossed the line into outright fraud and is living in expectation of imminent arrest. Just then, in keeping with his belief that "something will always turn up," an unexpected opportunity comes his way.

A wealthy shipbuilder named Herbert Greenleaf -- father of Richard "Dickie" Greenleaf, an old, casual acquaintance of Ripley's -- hires Tom to travel to Italy, track down Dickie (who is now living a bohemian life as a painter and sailor), and talk him into returning home. Tom gratefully accepts this commission, sets sail for Europe, and locates Dickie in the small Italian village of Mongibello. Dickie, who bears a surface resemblance to Tom, is living an enviable life. He owns a house, a boat, and a trust fund. Except for a platonic relationship with fellow expatriate Marge Sherwood, he is unattached and free to pursue his interest in painting, a calling for which he has more passion than talent. Tom quickly insinuates himself into Dickie's life. Eventually, driven by a compulsion he cannot resist, he claims that life for his own. On a boating trip near the village of San Remo, Tom murders Dickie, buries the body at sea, and proceeds to present himself to the world as Dickie Greenleaf.

The bulk of The Talented Mr. Ripley concerns Tom's attempts to sustain this complex impersonation, which requires him to shuttle back and forth between identities; to avoid all contact with Dickie's former friends; to maintain a believable, ongoing correspondence with the Greenleaf family; to commit forgery, larceny, even murder, in order to protect his secret. Highsmith recounts this tortuous process in a direct, unadorned style that generates considerable tension. The conclusion, which goes completely against the grain of more conventional suspense novels, brilliantly reflects the author's belief that we live in a universe in which irony rules and justice is rarely meted out.

While The Talented Mr. Ripley is an ingeniously plotted novel, its heart -- its psychological center -- lies in its carefully composed presentation of Tom Ripley. For years, critics have described Ripley as callous, calculating and, above all, "amoral," and he is surely all of those things. Mostly, though, he is a kind of visible emptiness, a void waiting to be filled with a viable -- if stolen -- identity. At one point, Marge Sherwood refers to Tom as a "nothing," and she is absolutely correct. Tom's decision to impersonate Dickie -- to become, in effect, someone else -- is a logical reflection of his essentially unformed character, which exists within a moral and spiritual vacuum. As Dickie Greenleaf -- a role he internalizes with astonishing thoroughness -- Tom acquires a sense of personal substance he has never before achieved. As Dickie, he now has a face to present to the world, and his successfully sustained performance ironically strengthens his alternate identity as Tom Ripley, a young man who finds his true self through covetousness, murder, and the systematic application of his peculiar, schizophrenic gifts.

Tom Ripley, a man immersed in a variety of roles, is among other things a great role for the right actor. It will be interesting to see just how much of his chameleon-like character Matt Damon is able to capture in the forthcoming film. Still, whatever the movie's ultimate fate might be, its appearance should focus renewed attention on Highsmith and her work, and that is entirely a good thing. If just a small fraction of the people who see the movie purchase the book, the Highsmith revival, which is long overdue, might finally come to pass. It never hurts to hope.

—Bill Sheehan

New York Times Book Review

The Talented Mr. Ripley not only demonstrates Highsmith's gift for using the genre conventions of the mystery novel to explore the existential ambiguities of identity, but it also attests to her keen gift for psychological insight. By chronicling the ordinary details of Ripley's life and the logical workings of his mind, she forces us to re-evaluate the lines between reason and madness, normal and abnormal, while goading us into sharing her treacherous hero's point of view.

More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews

New Yorker

Patricia Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing...bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night.

Time Magazine

For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393332148
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 6/28/2008
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 136,897
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 0.70 (d)

Meet the Author

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Biography

Suspense novels are often described as "chilling," but no one turns down the reader's emotional thermostat quite like Patricia Highsmith, author of such haunting psychological thrillers as Strangers on a Train and creator of the sociopathic series protagonist Tom Ripley. During her life, Highsmith was a popular author in Europe, where she lived; in her native United States, however, her books went sporadically in and out of print for decades. Now, the writer whom Graham Greene called "the poet of apprehension" has finally gained recognition in the States -- not only as a master of the suspense genre, but as a literary author of rare talent.

Highsmith grew up in Texas and New York, but spent most of her adult life in England, France and Switzerland. By most accounts she was a loner who avoided other people, including other writers; but she did have early help in her career from Truman Capote, who got her a stint at the Yaddo writers' colony in New York. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, tells the story of an architect and a psychopath who meet on a train and "swap" murders. The book gained Highsmith considerable fame, especially after it was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. A second novel, The Price of Salt, was printed under a pseudonym after her first publishers turned it down. Though her subsequent works didn't sell well in her home country, she kept turning out the kinds of novels and short stories the New Yorker called "bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night."

Several movies have been loosely based on Highsmith's books, including Danny DeVito's Hitchcock spoof Throw Momma From the Train; Wim Wenders' The American Friend, adapted from Ripley's Game; and Purple Noon, a French film based on The Talented Mr. Ripley. But it was Academy Award-winning director Anthony Minghella's lush screen adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, released four years after Highsmith's death and 44 years after the book's publication, that introduced Highsmith to a wider audience and led to a rediscovery of her works.

Subtle enough for a seminar yet entertaining enough for the beach, Highsmith's coolly narrated tales of terror display an observant eye for social behavior as well as individual psychology. Most books in the suspense genre provide a hero whose fundamental honesty and decency stand as bulwarks against the evil he or she confronts. But in a Highsmith novel, the reader is alone with victim and victimizer -- and an unsettling sense of empathy with both.

As Francis Wyndham has noted, Highsmith's "peculiar brand of horror comes less from the inevitability of disaster, than from the ease with which it might have been avoided. The evil of her agents is answered by the impotence of her patients -- this is not the attraction of opposites, but in some subtle way the call of like to like. When they finally clash in the climactic catastrophe, the reader's sense of satisfaction may derive from sources as dark as those which motivate Patricia Highsmith's destroyers and their fascinated victims."

Good To Know

Patricia Highsmith was born Mary Patricia Plangman; her parents divorced soon after she was born, however, and she was given her stepfather's last name. After Highsmith graduated from college, she lived for a time with her mother and stepfather in Greenwich Village, where she wrote comic books to support herself, including scripts for the Superman series.

A lesbian herself, Highsmith is thought to have written the first American novel in which a homosexual love story has a happy ending. The novel, The Price of Salt, was published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan; it was reissued in 1984 (as Carol), but didn't appear under the writer's real name until 1991.

Highsmith once told an interviewer that the only suspense writer she read was the master -- Dostoevsky, over and over. In her book Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, she wrote, "I think most of Dostoyevsky's books would be called suspense books, were they being published today for the first time. But he would be asked to cut, because of production costs."

The premise of The Talented Mr. Ripley was inspired by Henry James's The Ambassadors, in which a widow sends her fiance from America to Paris to fetch her wayward son.

1. Also Known As:
  
  Mary Patricia Plangman (birth name); Claire Morgan (pen name)
1. Date of Birth:
  
  January 19, 1921
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Fort Worth, Texas
1. Date of Death:
  
  February 4, 1995
2. Place of Death:
  
  Locarno, Switzerland

Read an Excerpt

'Charley Schriever told me you were in the insurance business,' Mr Greenleaf said pleasantly.

'That was a little while ago. I--' But he didn't want to say he was working for the Department of Internal Revenue, not now. 'I'm in the accounting department of an advertising agency at the moment.'

'Oh?'

Neither said anything for a minute. Mr Greenleaf's eyes were fixed on him with a pathetic, hungry expression. What on earth could he say? Tom was sorry he had accepted the drink. 'How old is Dickie now, by the way?' he asked.

'He's twenty-five.'

So am I, Tom thought, Dickie was probably having the time of his life over there. An income, a house, a boat. Why should he want to come home? Dickie's face was becoming clearer in his memory: he had a big smile, blondish hair with crisp waves in it, a happy-go-lucky face. Dickie was lucky. What was he himself doing at twenty-five? Living from week to week. No bank account. Dodging cops now for the first time in his life. He had a talent for mathematics. Why in hell didn't they pay him for it, somewhere? Tom realized that all his muscles had tensed, that the matchcover in his fingers was mashed sideways, nearly flat. He was bored, God-damned bloody bored, bored, bored! He wanted to be back at the bar, by himself.

Tom took a gulp of his drink. 'I'd be very glad to write to Dickie, if you give me his address,' he said quickiy. 'I suppose he'll remember me. We were at a weekend party once out on Long Island, I remember. Dickie and I went out and gathered mussels, and everyone had them for breakfast.' Tom smiled. 'A couple of us got sick, and it wasn't a very good party. But I remember Dickie talkingthat week-end about going to Europe. He must have left just--'

'I remember!' Mr Greenleaf said. 'That was the last weekend Richard was here. I think he told me about the mussels.' He laughed rather loudly.

'I came up to your apartment a few times, too,' Tom went on, getting into the spirit of it. 'Dickie showed me some ship models that were sitting on a table in his room.'

'Those are only childhood efforts!' Mr Greenleaf was beaming. 'Did he ever show you his frame models? Or his drawings?'
Dickie hadn't, but Tom said brightly, 'Yes! Of course he did. Pen-and-ink drawings. Fascinating, some of them.' Tom he'd never seen them, but he could see them now, precise draughtsman's drawings with every line and bolt and screw labelled, could see Dickie smiling, holding them up for him to look at, and he could have gone on for several minutes describing details for Mr Greenleaf's delight, but he checked himself.

'Yes, Richard's got talent along those lines,' Mr Greenleaf said with a satisfied air.

'I think he has,' Tom agreed. His boredom had slipped into another gear. Tom knew the sensations. He had them some-times at parties, but generally when he was having dinner with someone with whom he hadn't wanted to have dinner in the first place, and the evening got longer and longer. Now he could be maniacally polite for perhaps another whole hour, if he had to be, before something in him exploded and sent him running out of the door. 'I'm sorry I'm not quite free now or I'd be very glad to go over and see if I could persuade Richard myself. Maybe I could have some influence on him,' he said, just because Mr Greenleaf wanted him to say that.

'If you seriously think so -- that is, I don't know if you're planning a trip to Europe or not.

'No, I'm not.'

'Richard was always so influenced by his friends. If you or somebody like you who knew him could get a leave of absence, I'd even send them over to talk to him. I think it'd be worth more than my going over, anyway. I don't suppose you could possibly get a leave of absence from your present job, could you?'

Tom's heart took a sudden leap. He put on an expression of reflection. It was a possibility. Something in him had smelt it out and leapt at it even before his brain. Present job: nil. He might have to leave town soon, anyway. He wanted to leave New York. 'I might,' he said carefully, with the same pondering expression, as if he were even now going over the thousands of little ties that could prevent him.

'If you did go, I'd be glad to take care of your expenses, that goes without saying. Do you really think you might be able to arrange it? Say, this fall?'

It was already the middle of September. Tom stared at the gold signet ring with the nearly worn-away crest on Mr Greenleaf's little finger. 'I think I might. I'd be glad to see Richard again--especially if you think I might be of some help.'

'I do! I think he'd listen to you. Then the mere fact that you don't know him very well-- If you put it to him strongly why you think he ought to come home, he'd know you hadn't any axe to grind.' Mr Greenleaf leaned back in his chair, looking at Tom with approval. 'Funny thing is, Jim Burke and his wife--Jim's my partner--they went by Mon-gibello last year when they were on a cruise. Richard promised he'd come home when the winter began. Last winter. Jim's given him up. What boy of twenty-five listens to an old man sixty or more? You'll probably succeed where the rest of us have failed!'

'I hope so,' Tom said modestly.

'How about another drink? How about a nice brandy?'

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AuthorMomCC

Posted April 4, 2012

more from this reviewer

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Particia Highsmith is the story of To

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Particia Highsmith is the story of Tom Ripley, a twenty-five-year-old con artist and forgerer. He is approached by Mr. Greenleaf and asked to travel to Italy to try to persuade his son Dickie Greenleaf to return to America because he has been gone a long time and Mrs. Greenleaf is ill. Although Tom had met Dickie only once, and tells Mr. Greenleaf as much,Mr. Greenleaf insists and offers to pay all his expenses. Wanting to get away from his dead-end life and start anew, Tom accepts. Neither of them knows that their arrangement will lead to multiple crimes.
Entertaining storyline. However, it was a long read. The pacing was good but it sometimes read like one of the classics we had to read in English class at school. Description was heavy but not burdensome. The life of these well-off Americans living in Italy was slow and lazy so I guess the story was matching that kind of living. Interesting plot device.
This is the first crime novel I've read outside if Agatha Christie. There are sequels but I doubt I will read them. I have yet to see the movie.
I originally gave the book 4 stars because the writing is superb. Ms. Highsmith describes Italy beautifully. The crime part is a little farfetched in places. But I chalk that up to the time period which I guess is around the 1950s. With all the advances in crime scene investigation, it's hard for me to roll my mind back to a time where detectives just took people's word for it. Also there was a certain amount of deference to Americans living abroad. So because of that I downgraded to 3 out of 5 stars.
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Vanessortia

Posted August 14, 2011

Manipulative

So manipulative! I love it! I don't want to ruin the ending for anyone but I loved the ending and I did not think things were going to go that way for him. It's like a happy ending, but for the bad guy.
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BookCore

Posted July 8, 2011

more from this reviewer

Meh

Just when I was getting really bored with this book, the main character killed someone. Cool!

My mother recommended this to me. When my mother recommends books or movies, she gets downright insistent. She does not give up. I had seen the movie based on this book and liked it pretty well, so I thought, "Sure, why not." And mom compared Highsmith to Ruth Rendell, IMHO a goddess. And mom was in town a few days ago. So I picked it up and started reading.

If I had a peaceful, quiet, slow-paced life, with plenty of time to contemplate and think, I'd probably like this book better. Unfortunately, I don't have that sort of life. I think I've developed adult-onset ADD; I've largely lost my powers of concentration. The way my life is now, I just don't have time for books that don't get to the point fairly quickly. This book has a lot going for it, but I'm afraid it's destined to end up on my "started-but-didn't-finish" shelf.
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Mr.Krinkle

Posted April 13, 2011

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Crazy shennanigans!

Most stories need a hero and a villain. Mr. Tom Ripley is suprisingly both. A true gem is this novel. Pay close atenttion to the discrepencies that contrast book and movie. Ripley's sexualallity is not questionable (to me) - his threshold to avoid detection and capture are. Is there anything he won't or can't do? Balls to the wall! I have read over 120 books and this one has the most suspense.
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anonymousMK

Posted February 17, 2010

One of the best American novels of the 1950s

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a superb novel that in an elegant, restrained and utterly believable fashion explores the mind of a psychopath. It also makes excellent use of its postwar Italy setting. A must read for anyone interested in 20th century American fiction. Very highly recommended!
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Route

Posted April 7, 2009

A Wonderful Book

Though I don't hook on to books too long but this book proved otherwise . Because it was a week day and I had to work the next day I was sort of 'forced' to stop reading . This evening I wl be rushing home to continue !. To everyone just pick this book up and start reading especially for those who don't have the habit of reading . It may help you to create a reading habit ........ trust me it is A Wonderful Book .

K.Sam
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Anonymous

Posted July 20, 2002

Ripley is like no other character

The only bad thing is I saw this movie before I read the book so I knew what was going to happen. This was a great book and I love Patricia Highsmith's writing so easy yet elegant. There isn't really a bad thing about this book. I plan on reading the other 4 books connected to the ripley and you should to!
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Anonymous

Posted September 23, 2001

Haunting

This book is very creepy and haunting. Its amazing how Tom gets away with everything that he did. A wonderful story!!
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Anonymous

Posted June 3, 2001

Wow

I can barely ever find a book I like, and I almost cried when I finished this and it's two sequels. I usualy don't like anything remotely creepy, but I love this book. I have not seen The movie, and doubt completely that it does the book jus
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Anonymous

Posted September 20, 2000

Great psychology

This is an excellent psychological and philosophical thriller. I think a lot of people who disliked it did so because they were expecting something else. It's not a mystery, in the sense that you are watching a crime being solved. Rather, you get to watch the transformation of a likeable guy into a cold-blooded killer. Ripley is a wonderful character because he is so bold, so inhuman in many ways, but capable of funny little kindnesses. He doesn't seem to have any morals, but he has a profound sense of aesthetics. A friend of mine aptly described him as protean.
I think everyone has a bit of Ripley in themselves, and this book lets you get your chills and vicarious kicks in the same place.
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Anonymous

Posted May 31, 2000

The Best Book I Have Read in Months and Months

I read this book at the beach over the long Memorial Day weekend. This is the first book I have read in a long time that I absolutely could NOT put down! Ms. Highsmith's ability to evoke vivid images with her compelling prose...magnificent! I have not seen the movie but I have heard that it is awful...not true to the book at all. That's a shame because the whole time I was reading the book I kept thinking how beautifully and easily it would adapt to a screenplay. Ms. Highsmith truly made me feel as if I were THERE with Tom in Italy. I read of Tom Ripley's sociopathic exploits with morbid fascination...this man was completely devoid of any morality whatsoever...and to think that Ms. Highsmith actually made me 'root' for him!!! I only have one thing to say...READ THIS BOOK!!
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Anonymous

Posted May 2, 2000

The Not So Talented Mr. Ripley

The only thing I liked about this book was the fact that Matt Damon played Mr. Ripley in the movie. I thought the author left too many questions unanswered in the book. I was upset by the ending and by the activies of our dear friend Mr. Ripley throughout the book. This was definitly a book I COULD put down and when I finally did I could barely pick it back up.
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Anonymous

Posted April 28, 2000

Sneaky

The book is very interesting, in a sense that I didn't get board with it or anything. It has twist and turns all thoughout the book. Its a deffinet good book.
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Anonymous

Posted April 19, 2000

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith captured me in this gripping story about Tom Ripley. This book was one of the best books I've read in a long time.I saw the movie because I love Matt Damon and let me tell you the book was much better then the movie, but don't listen to me read it yourself.
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Anonymous

Posted April 14, 2000

A Must Read

Once I started reading this book, I could not put it down. It is one of those pieces of literature that if you put it aside for a while, you will have missed something. My sister and I read it at the same time and it took me two days (day and night) and it took her a week. I found it very hard to put down and you get so much more out of it than the movie (although Matt Damon does look GOOOOD!!!). I recommend this book to anyone who has the ability to read.
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Anonymous

Posted April 15, 2000

Whoa...

It has been years since I read a book that I can't stop reading. Whoa. I think maybe everyone can enjoy this book because of the mystery in it and shows how talented Tom Ripley is.
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Anonymous

Posted February 19, 2000

Good, but missing something

'The Talented Mr. Ripley' is a very well-written book, and enjoyable, but it lacks a character for Tom to spar with. Everyone is so stupid or self-involved that no one really comes close to the truth. Tom is such a master manipulator that you never feel that he is in any danger of being found out. It would have done better if it had that. If you are going to read this, you should see the movie as well. They balance each other out in that each one has what the other lacks. But if you only do one, read the book, because it offers a deeper look inside Tom's mind
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Anonymous

Posted January 29, 2000

This book was very-very good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've read Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley in three days and it was a very good book. I recommend that everyone should read it!!!! I can't wait to see the movie!!!!!!!!!!!
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Anonymous

Posted January 9, 2000

Mr.Ripley- As Good On The Pages As It Was On The Screen

I saw the movie, The Talented Mr.Ripley before I read the book. The moment after the movie finished I went to the library and got the book. It is a really cool story and yall should read it
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Anonymous

Posted January 11, 2000

The Talented Miss Highsmith

I bought this book because I am a big Gwyneth Paltrow fan and wanted to know what the movie was about. It was extremely interesting and better than I expected. I read the book very fast and enjoyed it very much and can't wait to read it again and the other books in the Ripley seris.
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The Talented Mr. Ripley

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Patricia Highsmith

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The Talented Mr. Ripley by Particia Highsmith is the story of To

Manipulative

Meh

Crazy shennanigans!

One of the best American novels of the 1950s

A Wonderful Book

Ripley is like no other character

Haunting

Wow

Great psychology

The Best Book I Have Read in Months and Months

The Not So Talented Mr. Ripley

Sneaky

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

A Must Read

Whoa...

Good, but missing something

This book was very-very good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr.Ripley- As Good On The Pages As It Was On The Screen

The Talented Miss Highsmith