3 out of 5

Will I continue to read the adventures of Ripley?  Absolutely.  Would I, if I wasn’t interested in the legacy thanks to the movie?  …Good question…?

Knowing that this book comes first in a… um… quin…tilogy..? actually helps a little bit with sitting through the boring bits… bits that I’m sure lovers of European vacations dug, or that literary folks would tell me were used to balance out Mr. Ripley’s unhinged persona, and I don’t disagree with that latter statement, but I also see it / read it as Highsmith getting to know her character as the story went along, feeling out Ripley’s frame of mind as she framed her scenes.  That’s not to say it’s not planned, but just that writers can discover just as much about their story while writing it as we get from reading it.  (guys I’m totes like a writing professor)  So I see this as Tom’s origin story, the Batman Begins of the series.  Potentially enriched by knowing what comes after, but if you read it as a standalone, it’s a tad clunky.

Ripley moves at a stop-start pace for me.  The intro is smooth, Ripley already paranoid, already on the run from his own imagination, as Dickie Greenleaf’s father follows him to a bar and asks if he knows of his son.  Which Ripley does, vaguely, and says as much, but soon finds himself carefully dolling the truth up, wanting to appear to Mr. Greenleaf to be an honest young man.  Isn’t he being honest?  Well sure.  But to Tom, the truth is just a way of spinning something, same as a lie.  It doesn’t matter what actually happened, it matters how it’s interpreted, what it says about you, and so on.  What Highsmith does excellently through the book is illustrate Tom’s persona as a sociopath.  He is believably constantly sensitive to how he is perceived, feeding through into almost every thought – I should appear this way, I should appear that way – and scenarios frequently trail off into several different possibilities of what Tom imagines could be happening in other’s heads, how this might change events, how it might change his life.  As we step through these moments, it’s riveting, fascinating reading.  We are all prone to this to some degree, and none of Tom’s thoughts are beyond some conceivable realm of conception – at a glance it’s not insane – but it’s the extent to which all falls under this calculated umbrella, taking the passion out of everything, including murder.

Which is where the book becomes more fascinating from a distance than up close.  When Ripley is directly interacting with people, he must think on his feet.  We get a rolling description of what every expression and statement could mean.  And when Ripley is on his own… he gets a tad wishy-washy, prone to mood swings, prone to questioning himself, prone to poetic studies of the European landscape to which he’s been sent by Mr. Greenleaf to see if he can persuade Dickie to come home to America.  This is where it’s a bit of a travelogue.  I don’t give a shit about mountains and sunsets and shit, so I don’t give a shit.  But as I said, I can accept it as evidence of how all of Ripley’s moods follow the same wandering flow – I just also think that these passages weren’t all needed, and exist as padding to lengthen the timeline of the story and romance up the setting.  The inevitable distancing that occurs for the reader experiencing actions through two layers – our imagination, then reading Ripley’s thought-by-thought contemplation and execution of events – everything is motivated by emotion, of course, but it’s all a premeditated emotion – this layering of the narrative already lacquers the tension, setting events up as a study than a thriller.

The book is incredibly fascinating to contemplate in hindsight.  And will, perhaps, be enriched by being able to note the bits that act as an origin for the Ripley who comes in the books that follow.  But though it might’ve been a nice shock at the time – essentially depicting a murderer without any sense of remorse, and not condemning the reader for not judging him for it – knowing some details of how things are going to go makes The Talented Mr. Ripley an interesting, but somewhat plodding read, Ms. Highsmith taking her time to illustrate a character we pretty much get after his first devious actions.