The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith (1955)

I read my first ever Patricia Highsmith novel; Deep Water, in February, I realised I had been overlooking a superb writer, and consummate storyteller.

The Talented Mr Ripley, the first of a series of five novels, is probably her best-known novel, made into a film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law in 1999. I saw the film, although it was a long time ago, I realised as I was reading the book that there were some notable differences between the book and the film. This irritated me – everyone knows the book is always better – so why do filmmakers go to the trouble and expense of adapting a book for film, and then change the original story? Argh, it makes me cross!

I feel as if everyone knows the essential outline of the story – so I do hope that I’m not going to give away any major spoilers.

Patricia Highsmith is noted for writing likeable anti-heroes. Tom Ripley must surely be the best of these. A small time con artist, we first encounter him in a New York bar. He realises he is being followed and thinking he is about to be arrested is surprised to be approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf instead. Mr Greenleaf has lost sight of his son Dickie who is living in Italy, he wants him home to work in his business. His letters having failed to have the desired result, Mr Greenleaf – recognising in Tom an acquaintance of his son’s – asks Tom to go, all expenses paid to Mongibello in Italy, intercept Dickie and persuade him home to the United States. Seeing a wonderful opportunity, Tom grossly exaggerates his friendship and possible influence with Dickie – and agrees to the trip.

“Mr Greenleaf was such a decent fellow himself, he took it for granted that everybody else in the world was decent, too. Tom had almost forgotten such people existed.”

Tom has been struggling to make a living, lives in a fairly insalubrious apartment, committing pointless acts of fraud, bitter at the lot he has been dealt in life. Tom despises himself – he longs to be someone else, having lost his parents young, there is a hated aunt somewhere in the background who rubbished him as a child, and to whom he writes dutifully from time to time. He looks at families like the Greenleafs and imagines how it might have been had he had the life he deserved. He gets invited to a gracious dinner at the Greanleafs enviable house – and is soon enough on his way to Italy to look up Dickie Greenleaf – living the charmed life that should have been his.

Arriving in Mongibello Tom wastes no time in running into Dickie and his friends on the beach below the house Dickie has taken, Dickie hardly remembers Tom of course, but invites him to lunch. Dickie is in the company of Marge – an aspiring writer, who Tom instantly realises feels more for Dickie than he does for her. Slowly, bit by bit – like the hustler he is, Tom insinuates himself into Dickie’s life. Tom can’t help but notice how alike he and Dickie are physically, apart from a slight difference in hair colour, he watches Dickie – how he moves, how he dresses – how sure of himself he is – how different to how the world sees Tom Ripley.

“He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn’t that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn’t take money, masses of money, it took a certain security.”

Tom likes to boast how he can imitate people easily, change his appearance, forge signatures. Marge doesn’t like Tom, and he feels just the same about her. She tells Dickie that she thinks Tom is gay – and has designs on him, Dickie laughs it off – but is surprised when he catches Tom trying on his clothes. Tom talks himself out of awkward situations quite easily – and he is soon back in Dickie’s good books, planning trips to other parts of Italy, laughing about the deal Tom made with Dickie’s father. Dickie agrees to joining Tom on a short break to Sanremo where they plan to hire a boat, Tom is delighted that Marge won’t be joining them, but he does fear that Dickie is beginning to tire of him. Tom realises that in order to live the life he wants with Dickie’s money he must take drastic action – kill Dickie, and assume his identity somewhere else.

What follows is an extraordinary cat and mouse game – can Tom really pass himself off as Dickie – avoiding people who knew Dickie – slipping in and out of personas? How long can this double life last?

“This was the end of Dickie Greenleaf, he knew. He hated becoming Thomas Ripley again, hated being nobody, hated putting on his old set of habits again, and feeling that people looked down on him and were bored with him unless he put on an act for them like a clown, feeling incompetent and incapable of doing anything with himself except entertaining people for minutes at a time. He hated going back to himself as he would have hated putting on a shabby suit of clothes.”

The Talented Mr Ripley is a brilliant examination of a fascinating personality – Highsmith explores Tom Ripley’s psychology through the games he plays, the chances he takes and the split-second decisions he makes. He is an outsider more comfortable as someone else than himself. He is undoubtedly a sociopath, but he is also a thief, a liar, and of course in time, a murderer – and yet Highsmith portrays him in such a way that we are able to sympathise with him – at least some of the time. He never quite emerges as the monster we know he should be.

I really need to read more Patricia Highsmith – he writes such compelling, intelligent thrillers. I will certainly look out for the other Ripley books. But the one I really want to read next is Strangers on a Train.