Falling In Love With Tom Ripley
‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ (1955) by Patricia Highsmith
“If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful , or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley
I have seen the 1999 film a few times with Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow but had not read the novel by Patricia Highsmith. I was aware that a brand new limited series had been made by Netflix — yippee! — and is due to be shown in April so I thought I would read the first book in a series of five about Tom Ripley, which I have just finished. It was as good as I was expecting and in fact even better.
Adaptations often change the story so I wanted to know from the horse’s mouth exactly how the author had portrayed her main fictional creation. I am not ashamed to say that I have fallen in love with Tom Ripley even though he is a murderer.
The Talented Mr Ripley is a psychological crime thriller and is exquisitely written by Patricia Highsmith. Her work led to more than two dozen film adaptations which began with her very first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950) which became the 1951 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock and Carol (published as The Price of Salt in 1952 under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan)…
