THE BOOKENING TITLE #20: The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith.


'Do you think Richard might have killed him?' McCarron asked quietly.
'No, I don't.'
'Why?'
'Because there was no reason for him to kill him - at least, no reason that I happen to know of.'
'People usually say, because so-and-so wasn't the type to kill anybody,' McCarron said.


My mum recommended this book to me; she'd read it and thought it was fantastic. I remembered watching and enjoying the film some years ago, so I was happy to take her up on her recommendation.

The Talented Mr Ripley is a fascinating, extremely readable 1955 novel with an enjoyably screwed-up protagonist. For the benefit of anyone who's not already familiar with the concept, I'll put my notes under a cut.



I love Ripley's strange tangle of desire to be Dickie versus desire for Dickie himself. 'He could have hit Dickie, sprung on him, or kissed him, or thrown him overboard, and nobody could have seen him at this distance.' His fantasy, towards the end of the book, of a world where he never killed Dickie, and they lived together for the rest of their lives.

Ripley is such a compelling character. He's a murderer and a pretty awful person all around, but, when you're inhabiting his mind, you want him to succeed. It's tense when the authorities come close to exposing him, because you want him to get away with it.

He's so well-drawn, too. His anxieties, his sense of unreality, his tendency to view the world with himself at the centre of it. I love him daydreaming, on the journey to Europe, about what the other passengers must be saying about him, because of course the other passengers must be talking about him; he's just so mysterious and important.

Everything Ripley does or says is so calculated. 'Finally Tom, to show that he was not obtuse about Marge, mentioned to Dickie that he thought she was acting strangely.' He's never done anything naturally in his life; there's always a specific impression to be made, there's always some sort of motive involved.

I love that at one point Ripley says he hasn't seen Dickie and thinks it's not quite true - not because it's inconsistent with reality, but because it's inconsistent with his previous lies. The truth isn't what actually happened; the truth is the story Ripley's been building up for all these months, layer on layer on layer.

I'm also fascinated by the way that, when Ripley abandons the Dickie persona and goes back to being Tom Ripley, he sheds any guilt for murdering Freddie. He killed Freddie when he was Dickie, so why should Tom feel bad about it? Any murders Dickie might have committed have nothing to do with him.

The book and the film ended very differently, which was a surprise for me! I think the film's ending is more effective; a lot of details of the film have faded over the years, but the end still stands out very clearly in my mind. I still think the book is excellent, though.



There's a quote on the front of my edition that describes Ripley as 'charming'. I wouldn't consider Ripley charming; I think, in many respects, he's a bit of a pathetic figure. But he's a very, very interesting creation. It was a strange, unsettling pleasure to inhabit his mind for this book.

I enjoyed The Talented Mr Ripley a lot, but I have no real desire to read the other books in the series. I'm happy to consider it a standalone title.