The Talented Mr. Ripley [Paperback]

We meet Tom Ripley almost as casually as new friends do. It's only by following him around, hearing his thoughts and observing what he does that we realize who he is. Ripley is an immensely capable man who floats like a newly cut wood chip on the surging tides of life, always buoyant regardless of the circumstances. He is extremely impulsive. If there's candy there, he cannot resist it. At the same time, he has so little invested in who he is that he can even be happier pretending to be someone else. He's a man without a core. He is also unattached to the world's judgments. He looks for neither approval nor acclaim. Solitude suits him well.

The story opens as the father of a casual acquaintance tracks Ripley down in a bar. The father wants to persuade his son to return from Italy to take up a career in the family business. Through this contact, Ripley finds himself sent off to Europe as a paid-for emissary with an expense account. Once there, Ripley makes no headway but does develop a friendship with his casual acquaintance before strains start to develop. What follows is one of the most interesting and intricate plot lines that it will ever be your pleasure to read.

The book's largest theme is about identity. Who are we really? Can we be someone different from whom we seem to be? How do we misjudge one another? I don't remember any other crime novel that explores such subtle questions so well.

I recently reread this novel for the third time. I found depths in the themes and story telling that I had missed before. Even if you have read it before, I suggest you do so again. If you haven't read any of the Ripley novels, you have a great treat ahead of you. The next book in the series is Ripley under Ground.

Enjoy a great read!

The characterisation of Tom Ripley in this book is faultless. You do get much more idea of him as a person, particularly in the short but effective flashbacks to his troubled childhood (which is also where you gain your sympathy for him). His journey to Europe and the tangled web that is weaved there is extremely absorbing. In the Venice scenes too you get disturbing glimpses of Ripley's horror of close physical contact with the female sex, even to the extent where he is revolted by seeing a lady guest's underwear draped over her bedroom chair. It is hardly surprising that Patricia Highsmith has drawn such a complex character study, she was infatuated with her creation, to the point that she would sign letters from both herself and Tom!

The other books in the Ripley series are well worth reading but, to my mind, don't quite match the first. A lot of Ripley's mystique disappears when he's leading his comfortable artsy-fartsy life in France, (and in "The Boy Who Followed Ripley", a very late book in the series, I felt Highsmith was a tad TOO delicate about his sexuality, although the Berlin scenes have a sort of 1970s fascination), but in this, the first, where he's a loner travelling across Europe, this is a must-read.