book review the talented mr ripley

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Matt Damon and Jude Law in the 1999 film The Talented Mr Ripley.

Mr Ripley's great talent? Making us like a killer and his crimes

The Reading group verdict is in: Patricia Highsmith’s amoral protagonist in The Talented Mr Ripley offers a queasy kind of entertainment – and an armchair psychologist’s perfect case study

“I couldn’t make an interesting story out of some morons,” said Patricia Highsmith in 1981. She explained: “The murderers that one reads about in the newspaper are, half the time, mentally deficient in some way, or simply callous. There are young boys, for instance, who pretend to be delivering, or who may help an old lady carrying her groceries home, and then hit her on the head when she invites them in for tea and rob her. These are forever stupid people, but they exist. Many murderers are like that, and they don’t interest me enough to write a book about them.”

Ripley, however, is a different case. He, Highsmith says, is “reasonably intelligent” and, crucially, amoral. “I suppose I find it an interesting contrast to stereotyped morality, which is very frequently hypocritical and phony. I also think that to mock lip-service morality and to have a character amoral, such as Ripley, is entertaining. I think people are entertained by reading such stories.”

The fact that the Talented Mr Ripley has now been in print for 60 years proves that last point. But it’s a queasy, uneasy kind of entertainment. Ripley may not be a typically moronic murderer. But that doesn’t make him any less real or believable. In the comments about last week’s Reading group article, for instance, a contributor came in with a pathological diagnosis, as if Ripley were a genuine case study:

“He is a perfect example of the narcissistic personality disorder. Swinging between the poles of excessive self-criticism and grandiosity, easily to take offence and vicious in retaliation – all to make up for a lack of core self.”

You can find scores of similar attempts to define Ripley’s symptoms on the internet. Plenty of them are sincerely technical :

“We are subtly introduced to the two overriding themes of the antisocial personality disorder (still labelled by many professional authorities “psychopathy” and “sociopathy”): an overwhelming dysphoria and an even more overweening drive to assuage this angst by belonging.”

Some kind soul has even devised a treatment plan for Tom:

“I would perform an MRI, complete blood work … to rule out comorbidities, as well as run a toxicology screening, STD/HIV screening … and MMPI (personality test) to evaluate the extremities of his personality and discover if other fluctuations other than his ASPD [antisocial personality disorder] could be treated with medication or effective psychotherapeutic techniques.”

Of course, all this presupposes the possibility of catching Ripley. Easier said than done.

There is something more serious going on here, too. Ripley feels like a real threat. In 1949, when Highsmith was addressing the issue of how to present a true-to-life psychopath on the page, she wrote in a notebook: “The psychopath is an average man living more clearly than the world permits him.” After she had realised her vision in 1955, she made another note: “It felt like Ripley was writing it.”

The challenge and fascination of the novel lies between those two observations. Ripley feels real – but in living more clearly than the world permits, he is also able to play out some dangerously enticing fantasies.

In a previous article I suggested that there was a moral challenge in the fact that Highsmith has made Ripley both a likable character and a cold-blooded killer. I’m now having to refine my opinion. Quite a few people who commented below the line rightly pointed out that there’s a certain satisfaction to his crimes. Nilpferd said: “Any of us who have seen less talented, more stupid people get ahead of us in life probably experience a certain frisson of pleasure at the way Ripley recalibrates these inequalities.” And Justanoldfool wrote: “Yes, Tom is a likable character for all sorts of reasons, but as much as anything, we like him because he does what he wants – and gets away with it.”

Anthony Minghella, the director of the film of The Talented Mr Ripley, stressed the same thing when he wrote about the book in the Guardian :

“His actions are an extreme response to emotions all of us recognise: the sense that there is a better life being lived by somebody else, somewhere else, someone not trapped inside the hollow existence in which we find ourselves. It’s one of the things which makes us human. We’ve all been Tom Ripley, just as we’ve all known a Dickie Greenleaf, the man who has everything, whose attention makes us feel special. We’ve all basked in the sunshine of that attention and felt the chill of losing it.”

The books don’t just make us like a killer, they make us like his crimes. Writing in the Paris Review, her biographer Joan Schenkar says that Highsmith’s novels “suck [the] reader into their bottomless vortex of moral relativities, transferable guilts and unstable identities”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the very next sentence, Schenkar suggests Highsmith herself was “more than a little on the psychopathic side”.

When the author was asked how close she felt to being a criminal, she replied :

“I can think of only one slight closeness, and that is that an imaginative writer is very freewheeling; he has to forget about his personal morals, especially if he is writing about criminals. He has to feel anything is possible. But I don’t understand why an artist should have any criminal tendencies. The artist may simply have an ability to understand …”

Even as she denied any moral ambiguity, however, she brought in bucket-loads :

“I get impatient with a certain hidebound morality. Some of the things one hears in church, and certain so-called laws that nobody practices. Nobody can practice them, and it is even sick to try … Murder, to me, is a mysterious thing. I feel I do not understand it, really. I try to imagine it, of course, but I think it is the worst crime. That is why I write so much about it; I am interested in guilt. I think there is nothing worse than murder, and that there is something mysterious about it, but that isn’t to say it is desirable for any reason. To me, in fact, it is the opposite of freedom, if one has any conscience at all.”

Naturally, as upstanding people we all agree that murder is the opposite of freedom. Even if we have a powerful counter-example in the shape of Tom Ripley …

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The Best Fiction Books » Crime Novels

The talented mr ripley, by patricia highsmith, recommendations from our site.

“It fascinates me that René Clément, the French film director, adapted this novel into a film called Plein Soleil (known as Purple Noon in the United States). In the story, Tom Ripley is sent from New York to Italy by the father of Dickie Greenleaf to bring Dickie back to the United States. As he ingratiates himself with his son, Tom Ripley adopts increasingly dangerous, amoral and murderous measures to reap the rewards of his lifestyle and finally, steal his inheritance. The novel starts in a gloomy Manhattan, where Ripley meets Dickie Greenleaf’s father. It’s not bright, it’s claustrophobic. And then we come to this Mediterranean world of plein soleil where in the movie everything is brightness—there’s a yacht, these lovely towns, and everybody is wearing lovely styles and costumes.” Read more...

The Best Book-to-Movie Adaptations

Peter Markham , Film Director

“It’s described as the godfather of the modern psychological thriller. Everyone who writes psychological thrillers must acknowledge Patricia Highsmith at some point…What appealed to me most about this book is that Tom Ripley is the ultimate sociopath, and yet we’re rooting for him.” Read more...

The Best Psychological Thrillers

J.S. Monroe , Thriller and Crime Writer

“It’s the first book I read where I was absolutely rooting for the villain, my entire emotional energy focused on willing him not to get caught. Even if you’ve seen the 1999 movie, the book is still worth reading. I love the rags-to-riches element, the settings: 1950s New York, the fictional Mongibello on the coast south of Naples, Venice. Highsmith wrote four more books featuring Tom Ripley, as well as other psychological thrillers.” Read more...

The Best Classic Crime Fiction

Sophie Roell , Journalist

“What I adore about the book is how brilliantly she explores the idea of moral grey areas and how the main character does things in a sort of neutral space—a psychopathic neutral space—and Highsmith writes this in a quite nonchalant way, while building this ongoing tension and horror. You sort of love Ripley, as the novel moves on, but you are also horrified by him. I just think that’s genius: when you can get me deeply caring about a character who I also find appalling and frightening.” Read more...

The Best Classic Thrillers

Lucy Atkins , Journalist

“I think Patricia Highsmith, at one stage, was much more appreciated in Europe than she was in America, even though she was American by birth. I think Ripley just set so many characters in motion because he was one of the first entirely amoral central figures, someone who commits appalling crimes and murders but you actually feel a kind of sympathy for. Well, if not a sympathy, you’re intrigued by the character. It’s also fascinating because he’s a kind of blank canvas. So in The Talented Mr Ripley – which was made into a movie not that long ago – he’s got this friend who he rather sucks up to called Dickie Greenleaf. When he murders Dickie and takes on his persona, it’s almost as if he becomes more real to himself as a person, because he’s being someone else. Which I think is fascinating – and goes back to actors and Charles Paris. This idea of the criminal who does it almost from lack of his own personality rather than the power of his personality. It’s a very interesting area, which has been explored a lot more since, but I think Patricia Highsmith was the first to do it.” Read more...

The Best Whodunnits

Simon Brett , Thriller and Crime Writer

Other books by Patricia Highsmith

Strangers on a train by patricia highsmith, our most recommended books, the hound of the baskervilles by sir arthur conan doyle, magpie lane by lucy atkins, the talented mr ripley by patricia highsmith, the woman in white by wilkie collins, the moonstone by wilkie collins, the silence of the lambs by thomas harris.

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Read the earliest reviews of The Talented Mr. Ripley , which turns 65 today.

The Talented Mr. Ripley —Patricia Highsmith’s iconic 1955 novel in which a struggling small-time con-man evolves into a full-blown psychopath—is widely considered to be one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time (its stylish 1999 film adaptation is also a stone cold classic of the genre). It’s been read as a coming-of-age tale , a forerunner of the era of imposture , and a tale of sociopathy for our Instagram age .

Today, on the sixty-fifth anniversary of its publication, we look back on three of the earliest reviews of Highsmith’s deliciously twisted opus.

“An exciting rat-race with the principal rat in the title role is Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley .

Tom Ripley’s talent is for crime, and crime with variations is the melody played by the author. A more objectionable young man than Mr. Ripley could hardly be imagined. You certainly wouldn’t want to met him; but he is perfectly fascinating to read about.

Engaged by Dickie Greenleaf’s father to bring Dickie home from Paris, the talented Mr. R. follows his own instincts to make of the errand a protracted European holiday. The wiles with which he handles Dickie—and Dickie’s attractive girl—eventually involve him in a wild web of evasions and impostures and few murders have been more starkly cold-blooded or more chillingly described than those which arise out of his adventure.”

–Lockhart American, The Pittsburgh Press , December 4, 1955

“Patricia Highsmith is one of the most talented suspense writers this reviewer has encountered in some time.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a fine way to make her acquaintance if her previous Strangers on a Train and The Blunderer were missed.

In stories of this genre, the most frequently lacking quality is character delineation. Miss Highsmith can boast it as one of her strong points. Her protagonist is weakling Tom Ripley, a self-pitying, self-seeking individual who shows horrifying elements of strength when murder is involved—a murder to provide him with a life of ease and a second to cover up the first.

The setting is Italy, a country the author obviously knows well. Ripley attaches himself to rich Dickie Greenleaf and grows to love the good life too well to give it up. Murder is his solution and he takes on the dead Greenleaf’s identity.

This leads to all sorts of dramatic complications which for suspense’s sake are better left untold. This reviewer, after turning over the final page, is looking forward to Miss Highsmith’s next effort with anticipation.”

–Jack Owens, The Fort Lauderdale News , October 30, 1955

“….is a young man of no means, and expensive tastes, and his nerveless, conscienceless progression is traced from the time when Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve an expatriate son, Dickie Greenleaf. Ripley attaches himself to Dickie, is annoyed by the adhesive Marge who is in love with Dickie and wary of Tom, and finally when Dickie’s friendship cools he kills him and assumes his identity. For several months he lives comfortably on Dickie’s income, but a former friend jeopardizes his new security, and he is forced to kill again. This time not only the police, but Marge and Dickie’s father are alerted; Tom is forced to assume his old identity but his resilient resourcefulness keeps him immune. The virtuosity here—more than anything else—will pin you to the page.”

–Kirkus Reviews , November 1, 1955

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Mini classic review: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a “sissy” by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante.

“If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful , or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture.”

The Talented Mr. Ripley blew my expectations out of the water. This psychological thriller novel gripped me from beginning to end. I can’t believe how much I was rooting for a two-time murderer (one more and he’s considered a serial killer) to get away with everything and rejoicing each time he does.

Tom Ripley, the protagonist of this book, is a sociopathic, obsessive liar. He cons his way into a life of luxury and ends up murdering, lying and stealing an entire identity in order to keep the new life he has ‘made’ for himself. I thoroughly enjoyed how awkward Tom was as himself and how, as the novel progresses, it becomes more and more unbearable being himself. His identity eventually becomes indistinguishable from Dickie’s and, when he steals Dickie’s life, he continues to impersonate Dickie’s personality even in his personal time.

I’m so fascinated by Tom’s relationship with Dickie. It’s highly queer-coded, but Dickie eventually suspects that Tom himself may be queer and becomes uncomfortable by their close relationship. I think it’s highly probable that Tom is actually queer, potentially bi. There’s many suggestions throughout the novel, with Tom himself saying at one point (in a flashback) that he can’t choose between men and women. His sexuality brings a very interesting dynamic to Tom’s character and his actions, and I don’t think I would have been as invested if there weren’t such obvious homoerotic subtext.

I haven’t seen the 1999 movie this novel is based upon, but I will be making that a priority. I have heard the ending is different, which I’m a little disappointed by. I was blown away by the ending of The Talented Mr. Ripley because all of the tension cultivates in one last scene with Tom … SPOILER … getting away with everything. I thought this was such a great ending, even if a little unrealistic.

How The Talented Mr. Ripley Differs From The Book

" The Talented Mr. Ripley ," the psychological thriller starring Matt Damon as the titular Tom Ripley and directed by Anthony Minghella, has maintained its popularity since being released in 1999. It also contains some of the most memorable performances that three of its most prominent actors — Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow — have ever given.

The film follows a young man named Tom Ripley, who, after being mistaken for a Princeton alum and an acquaintance of Dickie Greenleaf (Law), is hired by Dickie's father, shipping magnate Herbert (James Rebhorn), to seek out Dickie in Italy and persuade him to return to the United States. After meeting Dickie, along with Dickie's girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Paltrow), Tom quickly becomes enamored with Dickie's lavish lifestyle. Tom becomes obsessed not only with Dickie's life, but with Dickie himself, ultimately resulting in Tom murdering Dickie when Dickie tries to part ways with Tom. Tom then decides to take over Dickie's life, determined to do whatever it takes to keep up the false identity. Dickie's murder soon ends up leading Tom to commit more murders to cover his tracks and save himself, up until the film's ending , in which Tom is all alone, knowing that he'll always be outrunning his actions.

The film is based on the 1955 novel of the same name by acclaimed American writer Patricia Highsmith. "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is generally regarded as being a well-executed book-to-movie adaptation, but of course, some changes had to be made to fit the medium. So, in what ways does the film incarnation of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" differ from the book?

Tom of the book is already a criminal

In 2019, The Ringer dived deep into the world of "The Talented Mr. Ripley," analyzing both the novel and the film in a longform piece celebrating the 20th anniversary of the film's release. In the piece, writer Haley Mlotek points out that the Tom Ripley that readers meet in the novel is different from the Tom Ripley that viewers meet when he appears in the film. In the novel, Mlotek writes, Tom is "already a petty criminal" with a history of scamming and conning. Namely, he often poses as an Internal Revenue Services worker and calls freelancers to tell them that they underpaid their taxes, whereupon he has them send the owed "taxes" directly to him.

Yet, in the film, Tom has not quite entered the world of crime and manipulation. As Mlotek wrote, "He's simply filling in as a piano accompanist for a friend, wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket before running to make his shift as a bathroom attendant at a lavish performance space. When the audience leaves and before the janitor catches him, he plays the piano on the stage, indulging his fantasy of being watched."

Tom has some evolving to do before he becomes the type of person who can take over the life of someone he has just murdered. Rather, he begins merely as the type of person who can pretend to be a different version of himself than he is — someone who went to Princeton and was friends with Dickie Greenleaf. This way, viewers get to watch as Tom becomes obsessed with Dickie, then with keeping up the charade of pretending to be Dickie.

Tom is more of a sociopath in the book

In the film, there is palpable sexual chemistry between Tom and Dickie, which Tom even points out to Dickie just before he murders him, claiming that Dickie is only trying to cut ties with Tom because he is afraid of the feelings they share for one another. One could make a case that Tom genuinely does love Dickie, and later, Peter (Jack Davenport) ... and that he only kills both of them because he ultimately loves himself — specifically, the new version of himself that exists in the midst of luxury — more. The same argument likely could not be made for the Tom that exists within Highsmith's novel.

In an analysis for Off the Shelf , Leslie Kendall Dye writes that if you've only seen the movie, then you "haven't met the Tom Ripley that Patricia Highsmith dreamed up." Highsmith's Ripley is a straightforward sociopath "who both lies and murders in cold blood." Dye continues, "When his resentment boils, he quietly rearranges reality." On the other hand, Dye explains, the film is about a man who desperately wants to belong, wants to love, and "murders — at least the first time — in a moment of passion."

It's pretty easy to imply why writer-director Anthony Minghella made this key change — it's much easier to watch Tom murder a string of characters when we, as viewers, have already sympathized with him. Many people can relate to the desire to find where you belong, but a far fewer number can relate to murdering in cold blood.

All in all, for those who find Tom Ripley to be an utterly compelling character, there are two versions of him to interpret: book Tom and movie Tom.

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The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith book review reading thriller

The Talented Mr. Ripley book review

Today, we will be reviewing The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. First published in 1955, the novel saw four more books published in the series and have had multiple movie adaptions over the years. Keep reading for our book review and why you should read this classic psychological thriller novel!

The Talented Mr. Ripley Summary

Tom Ripley is a young man in New York City that scams people to survive. He is down on his luck and fed up with his life. And on top of that, he Is afraid that the police are after him for his scams. But luckily for him, he is approached by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf who wants Ripley to convince his son to return home from Italy.

Ripley slightly remembers his son Dickie and lets Herbert convince him to go to Italy. The trip to Italy is funded by Herbert and Tom tells himself that he will try to actually convince Dickie to come home. The problem is that Tom and Dickie aren’t as good friends as Herbert seems to think they are.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Once Tom arrives to Italy, he meets up with Dickie and his friend Marge Sherwood. Tom tries to cries to convince Dickie to return home but gives up soon after realizing that Dickie is happy here. Instead, Tom befriends Dickie and tries to start a new life with Dickie in his new home.

Things go well at first but Dickie’s relationship with marge complicates Tom’s relationship with Dickie. Out of fear of losing his new life, Tom takes drastic measures to ensure that he can live it up in Italy. He turns to his talents of lying and scamming people to live the rest of his life in leisure. But to do so, he must do things that even he cannot come back from.

Accomplisnments and Commentary

The novel was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel in 1956 and in 1957, it won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière as best international crime novel. It also made the BBC News 100 most aspiring novels in 2019.

When reading the novel, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The protagonist Tom Ripley was interesting and clever and I enjoyed the early exploration into his past. That is how he became to be who he is today and why he is good at scams. It also showcases the decisions he makes later on the novel. We are given all the reasoning and now watch as Tom does and why he does those things.

As a New Yorker, I will say I was not pleased by the description of New York City and how it was compared to Italy. Even if it was true back then and even today, only other New Yorkers can bash New York City. All jokes aside, part of what makes this book a great read is Highsmith vivid and beautiful description of Italy. She makes a good case as to why Tom wants to travel and doesn’t want to give up his new lifestyle.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this novel and can see why it made BBC’s News 100 mist aspiring novels list. Highsmith is as talented a writer there is and she easily makes you feel for Ripley even if his actions are questionable. Don’t pass up on this book because it was released in the 1950’s or else you will be missing out on an amazing book! Happy reading.

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I read it a few years ago and was completely drawn in. It’s so unusual for a book like this to be written from the villain’s viewpoint. It’s a testament to Highsmith that she was able to do so in such an effective way.

I think we all wanted to know if Tom’s scheme would come back to bite him. Her writing style made this a great read and I don’t think many authors could have made this book as great as she did.

There are four more books about Tom Ripley if you haven’t read them and are interested in reading more!

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Villains usually last through only one crime novel, while heroes are good for a whole series. That's a great inconvenience for their authors, because villains are usually more colorful than heroes. Patricia Highsmith's novels about Tom Ripley are the exception, a series of books about a man who is irredeemably bad, and yet charming, intelligent and thoughtful about the price he pays for his amoral lifestyle.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, her first Ripley novel, published in 1955, shows Ripley in the process of inventing himself and finding his life's work. He was a poor man who wanted to be a rich man, an unknown man who wanted not to be famous but simply to be someone else. Some men are envious of other men's cars, or wives, or fortunes. Ripley coveted their identities.

The novel shows him annexing the life and identity of a man named Greenleaf. It was filmed in 1960 by Rene Clement as " Purple Noon ," with Alain Delon as Ripley, and now it has been filmed again by Anthony Minghella (" The English Patient "), with Matt Damon in the title role. One of the pleasures of the two adaptations is that the plots are sufficiently different that you can watch one without knowing how the other turns out--or even what happens along the way. That despite the fact that they both revolve around Ripley's decision that he can be Greenleaf as well as, or better than, Greenleaf can be himself.

"Purple Noon" begins with the two men already friends. "The Talented Mr. Ripley," adapted by Minghella, has a better idea: Ripley is an opportunist who stumbles onto an opening into Greenleaf's life, and takes it. He borrows a Princeton blazer to play the piano at a rooftop party in Manhattan and a rich couple assume he must have known their son Dickie at Princeton. He agrees.

The Greenleafs are concerned about Dickie ( Jude Law ), who has decamped to the decadence of Europe and shows no sign of coming home. They offer Tom Ripley a deal: They'll finance his own trip to Europe and pay him $1,000 if he returns with their son. Cut to a beach in Italy, where Dickie suns with Marge Sherwood ( Gwyneth Paltrow ), and the original deception turns evil.

Remember that Ripley is already impersonating someone--Dickie's old Princeton friend. That works with Dickie ("I've completely forgotten him," he tells Marge), but eventually he wonders if anything Tom tells him is the truth. Ripley, at this point still developing the skills that will carry him through several more adventures, instinctively knows that the best way to lie is to admit to lying, and to tell the truth whenever convenient.

When Dickie asks him what his talents are, he replies, "Forging signatures, telling lies and impersonating almost anyone." Quite true. And then he does a chilling impersonation of Mr. Greenleaf asking him to bring Dickie back to the United States. "I feel like he's here," Dickie says, as Tom does his father's voice.

By confessing his mission, Tom disarms Dickie and is soon accepted into his circle, which also includes an epicurean friend named Freddie Miles ( Philip Seymour Hoffman ). Also moving through Europe at about the same time is a rich girl named Meredith Logue ( Cate Blanchett ), who believes things about Tom that Dickie must not be allowed to know. But I am growing vague, and must grow vaguer, because the whole point of the movie is to show Tom Ripley learning to use subterfuge, improvisation and lightning-fast thinking under pressure to become Dickie Greenleaf.

Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley five years after writing " Strangers on a Train " which Hitchcock made into a film he sometimes called his favorite. The two stories are similar. Strangers is about a man who meets another man and offers to trade crimes with him: I'll kill the person you hate, and you kill the person I hate, and since neither one of us has any connection with our victim or any motive for killing him, we'll never be caught. Talented has Dickie blamed for the drowning death of a local woman and Ripley "trading" that death as a cover-up for another.

Hitchcock's film subtly suggested a homosexual feeling in the instigator, and Tom Ripley also seems to have feelings for Dickie Greenleaf--although narcissism and sexuality are so mixed up in his mind that Ripley almost seems to want to become Greenleaf so that he can love himself (both Ripley movies have a scene of Ripley dressed in Dickie's clothes and posing in a mirror). This undercurrent is wisely never brought up to the level of conscious action because so many of Tom Ripley's complicated needs and desires are deeply buried; he finds out what he wants to do by doing it.

Matt Damon is bland and ordinary as Ripley, and then takes on the vivid coloration of others--even a jazz singer. Jude Law makes Dickie almost deserving of his fate because of the way he adopts new friends and then discards them. Gwyneth Paltrow's role is tricky: Yes, Dickie is her boyfriend, but he's cold and treats her badly, and there are times when she would intuit the dread secret if she weren't so distracted by the way she already resents Dickie.

The movie is an intelligent a thriller as you'll see this year. It is also insidious in the way it leads us to identify with Tom Ripley. He is the protagonist, we see everything through his eyes, and Dickie is not especially lovable; that means we are a co-conspirator in situations where it seems inconceivable that Tom's deception will not be discovered. He's a monster, but we want him to get away with it. There is one sequence in the film involving an apartment, a landlady, the police and a friend who knows the real Dickie that depends on such meticulous timing and improvisation that if you made it speedier, you'd have the Marx Brothers.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Rated R For Violence, Language and Brief Nudity

140 minutes

Matt Damon as Tom Ripley

Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood

Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf

Cate Blanchett as Meredith Logue

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Miles

Jack Davenport as Peter Smith-Kingsley

Written and Directed by

Anthony Minghella

Based On The Novel by

Patricia Highsmith

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The Talented Mr Ripley – Book Review

The Talented Mr Ripley was written by the late American author Patricia Highsmith who is revered as a great crime/psychological thriller writer. The aforementioned book demonstrates that claim well.

Tom Ripley is a young man without any fortunes or principles for that matter! He survives by hustling which includes fraud, faking signatures on cheques, and all things dishonest. He is also an expert liar. The Talented Mr Ripley was first published in 1955.

We glean that Tom Ripley comes from a deprived background and was raised by an aunt who was not terribly loving towards him. As a result, he considers himself somewhat of an outcast and certainly has a personality disorder. He has a single friend Cleo, who seems to like him for how he appears, even though she is oblivious to Tom’s true personality.

Through a mutual connection Tom Ripley meets the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf who believes Tom attended Princeton like his son Richard Greenleaf (Dickie). The spoilt Dickie Greenleaf lives a carefree life as an artist in Italy on his father’s money. However, Herbert Greenleaf wants his son to return to America and pays Tom Ripley a large sum of money to persuade him come back.

And the so the plot of The Talented Mr Ripley is launched. Tom travels to Italy and befriends Dickie with the mild intention of fulfilling Herbert Greenleaf’s wishes. But what actually happens is quite different.

Tom gets a taste and a liking for the ‘high’ life in Dickie’s company. It’s a contrast to the relative poverty of his previous life back in New York. The one fly in the ointment is Dickie’s association with the writer Marge. Needless to say, Tom and Marge have a dislike of each other.

In The Talented Mr Ripley you see the workings of a troubled mind and experience the lengths Tom will go to, to protect his new-found wealth and status.

The novel is concisely written and will keep you intrigued!

Ps. You may like the excellent movie (2000) by the same name staring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Thanks for stopping by!

Until next time

5 thoughts on “ The Talented Mr Ripley – Book Review ”

I didn’t realize that movie was based on a book from so long ago. That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing!

You are welcome! And if you can get to see the movie, it’s well worth it! Thanks again.

Yeah. I might try to and see now that you reminded me of it. Have a great week!

What a coincidence! Katherine and I were watching this movie last week which we thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks for the write-up Sharon.

Morning Matt! It’s a great movie. Now you mention it, I might watch it again!!! The book is slightly different but good! Thank you for taking the time to comment. Kind regards.

The Dark Delights of The Talented Mr. Ripley

"anticipation it occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing".

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Today, on the sixty-fifth anniversary of its publication, we look back on three of the earliest reviews of Highsmith’s deliciously twisted opus.

“An exciting rat-race with the principal rat in the title role is Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley .

–Lockhart American, The Pittsburgh Press , December 4, 1955

“Patricia Highsmith is one of the most talented suspense writers this reviewer has encountered in some time.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a fine way to make her acquaintance if her previous Strangers on a Train and The Blunderer were missed.

–Jack Owens, The Fort Lauderdale News , October 30, 1955

–Kirkus Reviews , November 1, 1955

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THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

by Patricia Highsmith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 30, 1955

....is a young man of no means, and expensive tastes, and his nerveless, conscienceless progression is traced from the time when Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve an expatriate son, Dickie Greenleaf. Ripley attaches himself to Dickie, is annoyed by the adhesive Marge who is in love with Dickie and wary of Tom, and finally when Dickie's friendship cools he kills him and assumes his identity. For several months he lives comfortably on Dickie's income, but a former friend jeopardizes his new security, and he is forced to kill again. This time not only the police- but Marge and Dickie's father are alerted; Tom is forced to assume his old identity but his resilient resourcefulness keeps him immune. The virtuosity here- more than anything else-will pin you to the page.

Pub Date: Nov. 30, 1955

ISBN: 0393332144

Page Count: 292

Publisher: Coward-McCann

Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1955

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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More by Patricia Highsmith

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH'S DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS

BOOK REVIEW

by Patricia Highsmith ; edited by Anna von Planta

by Patricia Highsmith

More About This Book

Appreciations: Patricia Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley Hits Sixty

PERSPECTIVES

Netflix’s ‘Ripley’: A Talented Criminal in Slo-Mo

BOOK TO SCREEN

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.

Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

More by J.A. Jance

by J.A. Jance

OUT OF RANGE

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2005

Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.

Crime-fighting Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett outdoes himself during a temporary transfer from sleepy Saddlestring to fashionable Jackson Hole.

Will Jensen, the Jackson game warden, was a great guy and a model warden, but once his wife left him six months ago, he spiraled into madness and suicide, and now Joe’s been called to replace him. The transition is anything but smooth. There’s no question of Joe’s family coming with him, so he’s reduced to hoping he can get a signal for the cell-phone calls he squeezes into his busy schedule. En route to his new posting, Joe has to pursue a marauding grizzly. He arrives to meet a formidable series of challenges. Cantankerous outfitter Smoke Van Horn wants to go on attracting elk with illegal salt licks without the new warden’s interference. Animal Liberation Network activist Pi Stevenson wants him to publicize her cause and adopt a vegan diet. Developer Don Ennis wants to open a housing development for millionaires who like their meat free of additives. Ennis’s trophy wife Stella simply wants Joe—and he wants her back. As he wrestles with these demands, and with a supervisor riled over Joe’s track record of destroying government property in pursuit of bad guys ( Trophy Hunt , 2004, etc.), Joe slowly becomes convinced that Will did not kill himself.

Pub Date: May 5, 2005

ISBN: 0-399-15291-1

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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by C.J. Box

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Of Tom Ripley and Patricia Highsmith, the Barnard Graduate

By Stuart Mitchner

I’ve been writing the same sort of thing since I was 15 years old — about people who are a little cracked.

—Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995)

Even before she started writing about “cracked” people, Highsmith was reading Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind , which she found in her parents’ library when she was “8 or 9,” and going through “case histories with footnotes about murders, sadists, crackpots, if they could be cured or not and what the psychiatrist decided to do about them.”

The Photograph

The girl who explored The Human Mind as a child is sizing up the world at 21 from the cover photo of Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks , 1941-1995. The picture was taken in July 1942, around the time she was telling her diary “Each person carries around in himself a terrible other world of hell and the unknown” which in the course of life he may see once or twice, “when he is near death or much in love, or when he is deeply stirred by music, by God or by sudden fear. It is an enormous pit reaching below the deepest crater of the earth, or it is the thinnest air far beyond the moon.”

Go fishing in the diaries and notebooks and you’ll find numerous indicators that you’re sharing the intimate thoughts of the novelist Greene says has you “constantly looking over your shoulder.” If, however, you came of age loving New York City, jazz, books, Times Square, the Village, and White Tower hamburgers, you’ll find a 21-year-old companion who delights in the city and shares your joy right down to lines like this one from October 14, 1942: “Very happy indeed. Had a hamburger at the old White Tower on Greenwich & went for a stroll down Eighth Street.” I may not have anything much in common with the notorious, hard-drinking, sex-crazed femme fatale who it’s said went around toting a handbag full of pet snails, but I’ve walked that late-night walk to the corner of Greenwich and Seventh Avenue South, and even though I had to grow up to “get” Henry James, I feel at one with the writer who fell in love with writing on March 28, 1942: “Read The Ambassadors this A.M. very happy. Want to work — want to write — express somehow what I feel about the thrilling and wonderful impracticability of being in love with it.”

All that said, when I look at the face on the cover of Diaries and Notebooks after reading the passage about the “world of hell and the unknown,” I know that Highsmith has already “been there,” from “the deepest crater” to “the thinnest air.” She’s looking right at me, one eye in the shadows, the other sizing me up the way Tom Ripley sized up his first victim Dickie Greenleaf in the charged moment before attacking him with an oar, clubbing him to death, and heaving his body in the ocean. The seminal murder in Highsmith’s fiction takes place in her 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was in fact inspired by The Ambassadors , wherein a rich American sends an envoy to Europe to rescue a wayward son. While it’s easy to imagine James throwing Ripley out the window after reading the murder scene, my guess is he would find the identity theft plotline fascinating.

The Week of Ripley

The binge began with Steven Zaillian’s dazzling new Netflix series, filmed, brilliantly, in black and white, in striking contrast to the Mediterranean light of the Ripley films that preceded it, which were all shot in glorious color. The murder scene in Zaillian’s Ripley is a visual tour de force, with the sea itself depicted as if roused by the sudden violence of the act, Ripley flung from a boat that seems to be charging through the water with its own malevolent power, the body ultimately propelled to the depths as if shot by a cannon. When Matt Damon’s Ripley kills Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), it’s ugly, awkward, and leaves a bad taste; the same is true in René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), when the most glamorously unlikely of all Ripleys, Alain Delon, prevails in a clumsy fight.

Highsmith returns to the scene of the crime in Ripley Under Water , a post-mortem for the whole dark driven Ripley enterprise that begins with a prank phone call from an antagonist pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf risen from the ocean depths. The grisly, giggly phone call represents a serious threat from a new neighbor, sending Ripley’s constructive paranoia into overdrive because the caller not only knows Ripley’s story, he’s actually dragging the river for the remains of the man Tom clubbed to death with a wine bottle (of a superior vintage of course) five years before. And when the bagged remains are dumped on Ripley’s palatial doorstep and the gendarmes summoned, Msr. Tom alertly and expeditiously stows the bag in his brown Renault, shares a gin and tonic with his friend Ed, and puts Brahms’s Opus 39 on the CD player, “a series of sixteen brilliant waltzes played on the piano…. Tom felt the drink at once, but he also felt the Brahms making his blood run faster. One rapid and thrilling musical idea followed another, as if the great composer were deliberately showing off.”

So is Highsmith, with her subsequent blending of Brahms and forensics. After the drink, Ripley and his accomplice deal with the bones, the head is missing (“probably rolled off don’t you think? Cartilage dissolved.”) Highsmith shares Ripley’s contempt for the tiresome, pernicious, deeply annoying adversary she’s created. For over 300 pages, she has you lusting for the denouement, a vicarious Tom Ripley following her into the “other world of hell and the unknown.”

A New York Romance

In the end, I’m drawn back to the face on the cover of Diaries and Notebooks , for none of the characters in the Ripley books (or films) are as complex and compelling as Highsmith herself, who would sometimes sign copies to friends “with love from Tom (Pat).” One thing’s certain, the seductive young woman in this photograph has designs on the man taking her picture.

In August 1942, Highsmith mentions posing for a “quite impracticable & wild” photographer named Rolf Tietgens, who, as she puts it in her first entry about him, “eyes me like a wolf.” After showing her the photos, “two of which are good,” Rolf says he wants to go for a walk with her that Sunday, and she’s already wondering if she could “be in love” with him. He’s gay, she thinks she’s bi, and “neither of us will admit it can be the opposite sex, and both of us can excuse ourselves by saying it is not, of course, the opposite sex.” Later: “I should like very much to sleep with him…. Being with him is like reading a wonderful poem — by Whitman, Wolfe, or the First Voice himself. He reads such things into me, but I am mute beside him.”

“The Strangest Day”

On August 16, she writes: “I think this is the strangest day of my life. At any rate I am nearest to falling in love with Rolf T. Met at Lex & 59, rode up to Van Cortlandt park…. It rained like mad & we got soaked. Then we sat in my room and talked. He looked over all my books. Especially liking Blake and Donne. It was actually fun standing there with him & very strange because it was fun — the simple reason is he is the only man who ever knew all about me … So we watched the boats and the lights and he told me all about Hamburg [the setting director Wim Wenders chose for his Ripley film, The American Friend ]…. Then we walked to the cobblestoned street that was deserted & stood there over an hour. He kissed me a few times — rather a mutual thing for a change. It was quite wonderful & perfect, and for several moments I could see happiness and read it in the sky like a strange new word written…. So tonight I am new, I am a new person — and who knows what will come of it?”

By October 9, it’s all over (all but a lifelong friendship): “I do not want the lover who refreshes me with the harmony of his voice, the tones in his throat as he reads me Blake, nor do I want the lover who cleaves unto me, whose heart is my heart, whose soul is ever in communion with mine tho we are apart. Give me rather the lover (or the loved) who drives me mad with the antithesis of all your peace, who is not spiritual except in his most ruthlessly physical moods, who never heard of Blake and doesn’t want to — Give me only the beloved with a question and a mystery to solve, who changes faster than I can follow, whose every gesture, breath, movement is an intense delight to me.”

The Barnard Graduate

Finally, I’ll confess that my preferred Highsmith is not the alleged anti-Semite who dedicated Ripley Under Water “To the dead and the dying among the Intifadeh and the Kurds, to those who fight oppression in whatever land, and stand up not only to be counted but to be shot.” The person I’m keeping company with is the Barnard graduate who writes on August 11, 1942: “I am no longer fascinated by the decadent, much less captivated by its color, variety, and sensational possibilities in literature. And oddly enough, it has been the war that made the change. The war makes a writer, perhaps makes everyone, think of what he loves best.”

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An illustration of Judi Dench shows an older woman with short and slightly spiky white-gray hair, wearing a green blouse and a delicate necklace. She is slyly smiling.

By the Book

Judi Dench’s Eyesight Keeps Her From Reading, but Not From Books

“They’re snapshots of the past: first-night gifts, holidays abroad, memories of lost friends and loved ones,” the award-winning actress says. Her latest, written with Brendan O’Hea, is “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent.”

Credit... Rebecca Clarke

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What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

That’s an impossible question. The best in 89 years? How do I know? I remember being given A.P. Wavell’s “Other Men’s Flowers” as a birthday present when I was young. It’s a collection of poetry, which opened my eyes to the power of verse. But then I also adored “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” by Patricia Highsmith . My husband, Michael [Williams], bought it for me as a holiday read. I devoured it and didn’t want it to end. I had to ration myself to a couple of pages a day.

What’s the last great book you read?

“ Dormouse Has a Cold,” by Julia Donaldson . It’s a lift-the-flap children’s book, sent to me when I was recovering from a cold.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?

After lights out at boarding school when I was 15. I was in bed under the covers with a torch reading Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”

How do you organize your books?

I don’t. I have so many books, but never enough shelves, so I have books everywhere — piled up on tables, chairs, running along window sills, books in every available nook and cranny. Because of my eyesight I can no longer read, but I love being surrounded by books — they’re snapshots of the past: first-night gifts, holidays abroad, memories of lost friends and loved ones. I still have my father’s individual copies of the Temple Shakespeare from 1903. They’re small, red-leather-bound copies with gilt lettering on the cover, and if I hold one I can be transported back to my childhood and family quizzes about Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s writing, you say in the new book, “has the capacity to make us feel less alone.” What other writing has done that for you?

Oh so many — Iris Murdoch, Chekhov, Zoë Heller, J.D. Salinger — any writer who can reflect us back to ourselves and help us discover who we are.

You mention seeing a theater ghost in the book. Do you enjoy ghost stories?

I love a good ghost story. I remember being on a family camping holiday in Scotland when my daughter, Finty, was young. We snuggled up under a blanket, while Michael poured himself a large vodka and tonic and read us “The Mezzotint,” by M.R. James. It was thrilling.

Did you ever read backstage to pass the time?

No, there’s never time. And in any case I couldn’t, as I’d be worried about becoming too engrossed in the story and missing my cue.

What book, fiction or nonfiction, best captures life and work in the theater?

Again, there are so many, but I’ll opt for “National Service,” by Richard Eyre. It’s such an honest account of the ups and downs of running a big organization like the National Theater.

What made Brendan O’Hea a good interviewer for this book?

We’re old friends and have no secrets from each other. We also have the same sense of humor and a shared passion for Shakespeare. He’s tenacious in his questioning, which probably means that I’ve revealed more about my personal life and acting technique in this book than I have in any other .

Does the Shakespeare authorship debate interest you?

No. William Shakespeare from Stratford is good enough for me and I’ll settle for that.

Of all the characters you’ve played across different media, which role felt to you the most fulfilling?

I’d have to say Cleopatra: She’s mercurial, witty, imperious, passionate, irreverent — the whole of life is in that part — you get a real intellectual workout whilst playing her. In fact, I’d like to be getting ready now to go onstage to play her — look, I’m getting goose bumps at the thought.

If an aspiring actor were to read one portion of the book, which would you suggest, and why?

I’d hope there was something to be gleaned from every chapter, but there’s advice on the rehearsal process, coping with first-night nerves and tips on verse speaking. I’m just sharing a little of what I’ve learned over the past 70 years, which will hopefully act as a springboard for aspiring actors to formulate their own ideas. I’d also like to say that we’ve had wonderful feedback from people who aren’t actors — many of whom were put off Shakespeare at school — and, having read our book, felt inspired to revisit his plays.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I’m not a very good cook, so I may have to suggest that people eat before they arrive. I’d certainly invite Shakespeare. I’d ask him if he had another play up his doublet. I’d also like to meet Henrik Ibsen — who I recently discovered I’m related to — although he might scowl if I served him my own version of Norwegian meatballs. And I know Billy Connolly has written a few books, so I’d have to invite him to be assured of a good laugh.

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As book bans have surged in Florida, the novelist Lauren Groff has opened a bookstore called The Lynx, a hub for author readings, book club gatherings and workshops , where banned titles are prominently displayed.

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The Talented Mr. Ripley Paperback – September 1, 1992

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Book 1 of 5 Ripley
Print length 304 pages
Language English
Publisher Vintage
Publication date September 1, 1992
Dimensions 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10 0679742298
ISBN-13 978-0679742296
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The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game (Everyman's Library)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review.

Unlike many modernist experiments, The Talented Mr. Ripley is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated maneuvers of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lecter. --Patrick O'Kelley

From the Inside Flap

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (September 1, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679742298
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679742296
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
#2,876 in TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction
#61,772 in Mysteries (Books)

About the author

Patricia highsmith.

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

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Jude Law and Andrew Scott unite for a Talented Mr. Ripley crossover at 2024 Met Gala

Tom and Dickie: No Way Home.

Tommy, how’s the posing?

Andrew Scott and Jude Law united for an unexpected Talented Mr. Ripley crossover on the 2024 Met Gala red (er, green and beige) carpet.

Law, who played Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley , was photographed alongside Scott, who plays the titular Tom Ripley in Netflix’s new eight-episode series Ripley .

The duo posed alongside Donatella Versace at the event in New York City, which bore the theme "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion."

Kevin Mazur/MG24/Getty Images for The Met

In the series helmed by Steven Zaillian, Scott plays the cunning protagonist who travels to Europe to befriend the wealthy Dickie Greenleaf (here played by Johnny Flynn), gradually building a strong relationship with him until their friendship takes a sudden turn. Matt Damon portrayed Tom in the 1999 film, which earned Law an Oscar nomination for his turn as Dickie.

Law previously spoke about watching the new series 25 years after the release of his iteration of Ripley . "Steve Zaillian's, in many ways, couldn't be further from Anthony's," he said. "It's very interesting to see what scenes and threads still come to the surface, even if they are very different stylistically and in their pacing."

"I'm enjoying it," Law continued. "How can one not? It's such great material. You're in great hands with wonderful actors, and it's such an interesting character. Both versions reflect the director in many ways. One is visual, colorful, and romantic. The other is quite forensic and more sinister. Film, to me, often reflects the person at the helm of the camera."

Law also stated that he hasn’t watched Minghella’s film in a long time. "it was funny how many of the scenes are similar and kicked up so many memories in my mind," he said. "And how well I knew it. I kept thinking, 'Oh God, I remember this.' Down to the name of Dickie's maid, Ermelinda. I always remember saying, 'Ermelinda, Ermelinda.' There was an emotional level, too, to revisiting those characters."

The 2024 Met Gala was co-chaired by Anna Wintour , Bad Bunny , Chris Hemsworth , Jennifer Lopez , and Zendaya . Visit EW’s 2024 Met Gala gallery to see all the celebrity looks from this year’s event.

7 Best Book Adaptations Coming 2024

F rom Dune: Part Two to One Day , this year has already begun with several book adaptations to the screen. Yet, the excitement isn't quite over, considering that other notable page-turners are getting turned into films and TV shows. For instance, The Idea of You , which is based on a novel by Robinne Lee , is already breaking records with the most viewed trailer from a streaming service ever. Another anticipated release, the cinematic version of Wicked , has been a long time in the making, and it will finally hit theaters by the end of this year. With so many upcoming page-to-screen projects coming out, here is a curated list filled with must-sees.

Release Date: April 4, 2024 | Book: "The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith

Cast: Andrew Scott, Johnny Flynn, Dakota Fanning, Eliot Sumner

After Matt Damon played Mr. Ripley in the 1999 film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith 's novel, Andrew Scott will take on the role of the grifter in an upcoming miniseries. Similarly to the film and the book it is based on, the Netflix original will follow Tom Ripley, a con man in the '60s that often gets by in his schemes. After a wealthy man hires him to retrieve his son from Italy, the protagonist becomes obsessed with the person he is supposed to take back home. As the character becomes exposed to the luxurious lifestyle in Italy, he slowly gets entangled in murder, deceit, and fraud.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Release Date: April 19, 2024 | Book: "Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII" by Damian Lewis

Cast: Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Eiza Gonzalez, Hero Fiennes Tiffin

After leaving The Witcher in Season 3, Henry Cavill has been busy with other cinematic ventures, including Argylle and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare . The latter title is set to be released next month, and it will be centered on a top secret group that fought the Nazis during World War II and were commanded by Winston Churchill. Although the film is based on Damian Lewis ' book, it is inspired by a real-life motley crew that used some unconventional fighting techniques to change the course of the war.

The Sympathizer

Release Date: April 19, 2024 | Book: "The Sympathizer" by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Cast: Hoa Xuande, Sandra Oh, Robert Downey Jr. Ky Duyen

HBO isn't done with book-to-series adaptations, and their next anticipated release is The Sympathizer . Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the series will follow a North Vietnamese spy (played by Hoa Xuande ) who settles in Los Angeles amid the end of the war in Vietnam. As he lives in America within a refugee community, the main character secretly continues to spy and report his findings to the Viet Cong. The project is executive produced by recent Oscar winner, Robert Downey Jr. who will also star in the series as multiple characters.

The Idea of You

Release Date: May 2, 2024 | Book: "The Idea of You" by Robinne Lee

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Ella Rubin, Annie Mumulo

As previously said, the excitement from fans over The Idea of You has been unreal. The film premiered at SXSW earlier this month, and it received primarily positive reviews from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Based on Lee's novel of the same name, the adaptation follows a divorced woman in her 40s called Sólene ( Anne Hathaway ), who falls head over heels for a much younger and charming, boyband lead singer (Hayes played by Nicholas Galitzine ). Despite the significant age gap, the two have a heated romance that defeats society's expectations.

The Watchers

Release Date: July 14, 2024 | Book: "The Watchers" by A.M. Shine

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Alistair Brammer, Hannah Howland

A.M. Shine's bestseller, The Watchers , will be adapted to the screen later this year. The project will mark Ishana Shyamalan 's feature directorial debut, after years working alongside her father ( M. Night Shyamalan ) in the Apple TV + series The Servant and in Old . The film will follow Mina ( Dakota Fanning ), a 27-year-old artist who embarks on a trip to the Western Irish countryside. As she travels on foot, the protagonist soon gets lost in the forest and entrapped in a concrete bunker alongside three other strangers. During the nighttime, various creepy-looking creatures watch these people in the bunker from the outside, making it nearly impossible to know what their intentions are. As this group of people plan to escape during the daytime, they become fearful of whether they will make it out of the forest before the creatures come after them at night.

The Amateur

Release Date: November 8, 2024 | Book: "The Amateur" by Robert Littell

Cast: Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Julianne Nicholson, Caitriona Balfe

Rami Malek is ready to tap into CIA territory again, this time not as the villain. Based on Robert Littel 's page-turning thriller, the film will follow Charles Heller (Malek), a CIA cryptographer who is stricken by grief after his wife dies in a London terrorist attack. As the character seeks to avenge his wife's death, Charles begs the agency to train him so that he can be more active on the field. The film will be directed by James Hawes , who directed One Life and Black Mirror . It will also star The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's alum Rachel Brosnahan and Outlander 's lead actress, Caitrona Balfe .

Release Date: November 27, 2024 | Book: "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregorie Maguire

Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Michelle Yeoh

There is still a while left before Wicked lands in theaters. Yet, compared to the 20-year wait for the musical to even be adapted to the screen, a few months isn't too far ahead. The film will have Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande playing the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good, much before the events that unfold in The Wizard of Oz . The two witches used to have a tight-knit friendship, whose bond goes through various ups and downs until they ultimately head their separate ways. The movie musical will be split into two films, meaning that there will still be more material to cover even after Part I comes out on Thanksgiving.

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Talented Mr Ripley crossover as Andrew Scott and Jude Law meet at Met Gala

Actors took ‘garden of time’ theme literally as they united for a crossover spanning decades, article bookmarked.

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Talented Mr Ripley fans were treated to a fun crossover as Jude Law and Andrew Scott united at the Met Gala on Monday (7 May).

Law played Dickie Greenleaf, the vagabond son of a wealthy man, in the 1999 movie. Meanwhile, Fleabag actor Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley, a down-on-his-luck grifter hired to convince Greenleaf to return home, in the Netflix series Ripley , which was released last month.

The eight-part miniseries , based on the 1955 Patricia Highsmith psychological thriller , followed the hit film, which was directed by Anthony Minghella and starred Matt Damon as the titular character.

Law and Scott were joined by Donatella Versace on the red-carpet at fashion’s most anticipated event , which takes place annually at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

This year’s theme was “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” with guests instructed to follow a dress code inspired by “The Garden of Time”, which takes inspiration from a short story of the same name written by JG Ballard in 1962.

The duo seemed to take the theme literally as they took part in a crossover spanning decades.

Law shared his thoughts on Scott’s reprisal of the role in the series in an interview with Entertainment Weekly earlier this year.

“I’m enjoying it. How can one not? It’s such great material. You’re in great hands with wonderful actors, and it’s such an interesting character,” the 51-year-old said.

Arguing that “Steve Zaillian’s [version], in many ways, couldn’t be further from Anthony’s”, Law added: “It’s very interesting to see what scenes and threads still come to the surface, even if they are very different stylistically and in their pacing.

“Both versions reflect the director in many ways. One is visual, colourful, and romantic. The other is quite forensic and more sinister. Film, to me, often reflects the person at the helm of the camera.”

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Law admitted that although he hasn’t watched his version “in many, many years”, viewing the new adaptation brought “so many memories in my mind”.

The Talented Mr Ripley was released to rave reviews. It landed five Oscar nominations at the 2000 Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Law.

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In 'Ripley' on Netflix, Andrew Scott gives 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' a sinister makeover

NEW YORK – In new Netflix series “Ripley,” Andrew Scott plays one of pop culture’s most notorious scammers. But offscreen, the Irish actor is usually the one getting duped.

“I’ve fallen victim to fraud so many times,” Scott recalls with a sigh, seated on a couch in a tucked-away office in Union Square. On one occasion, “a woman got me on the street saying her son had been in an accident and she couldn’t get a train. I brought her to an ATM machine and gave her my phone number – what an idiot!”

He didn’t realize he’d been swindled until later that night, “when she called me drunk and laughing at 2 a.m. asking for more money. She was really good at acting!”

Andrew Scott's 'Ripley' is more 'sinister' than the Matt Damon and Jude Law movie

“Ripley” (streaming Thursday) is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated 1999 film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. The story follows a man named Tom Ripley (Scott), who is hired by a shipping tycoon to travel to Italy and convince his son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), to return to the U.S.

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Posing as an old college chum, Tom quickly ingratiates himself into Dickie’s inner circle and laps up his luxurious lifestyle. But Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning), has her suspicions about their new friend, which grow after Dickie mysteriously disappears and Tom is questioned about foul play.

The eight-part thriller is written and directed by Steven Zaillian (“ The Irishman ”). Unlike the sumptuous, sultry movie – which was reworked for Gen Z in last year’s “ Saltburn ” – Zaillian says he wanted to create something less “beautiful” and more “sinister.” The slow-burning show is shot entirely in black and white, and the characters are aged up from their mid-20s to late 30s.

Our review: Andrew Scott is talented, but 'Ripley' remake is a vacuous flop

Reading the book, “I felt, ‘What do you mean, Dickie’s got to come home? He’s on his post-college break,’” Zaillian says. “It just didn’t feel very believable to me, at least in how we think about 25-year-olds today.” Also, “it’s a little more desperate or pathetic” watching these characters laze about when they’re pushing 40: idly writing and painting, but spending most days just drinking or lounging at the beach.

To play Tom, it was important to find an actor who “could perform, often without any dialogue, and make us understand what he’s feeling,” Zaillian says. Enter Scott, 47, who’s best known for his magnetic turns in “ Fleabag ” and “ All of Us Strangers .” The Emmy nominee was surprised he was considered for the role.

“I was like, ‘What part of my murderous nature are you picking up on?’” Scott jokes. He read all eight scripts during one transatlantic flight and "I was just so gripped by it. Having all this space with Tom and the other characters, the big, bloody events become less significant. A lot of the other scenes are actually quite domestic,” with darkly comic exchanges that showcase Highsmith’s wit.

Netflix show leans into 'queerness' of the Tom Ripley character

“Ripley,” at its heart, is a queer story. (After all, what gay man hasn’t crushed on a straight guy?) The show explores the jealousy and tension between Tom and Marge.

“You spend loads more time with those two characters than you do with Dickie and Tom,” Scott says. “They greet each other with tight smiles, and they dislike in each other what they see in themselves.”

Highsmith denied that Tom was gay, saying in a 1988 interview that he merely “appreciates good looks in other men” and was married to a woman in subsequent novels. But the ‘90s movie embraced the story’s homoeroticism, with Damon's Tom at one point suggesting he join Law's Dickie in the bathtub.

“The film leaned into Tom’s gayness, and this show perhaps leans toward his queerness, in the sense that he’s other,” Scott says. “I was very reluctant with so many different facets of Tom’s personality to diagnose him with anything: his nationality, his age, his sexuality. The reason the character is so enduring is because we have so many questions about him.”

The show forgoes any intimacy. (Chillingly, Tom’s most tender moments are with his victims.) Instead, it finds thrills in the meticulous work that Tom puts into hiding bodies and covering his tracks, occasionally getting tripped up in his own web of lies.

“He’s not a natural-born killer; blood makes him feel a bit queasy,” Scott says. “I think (Highsmith’s) great achievement is that she makes the audience feel what it’s like to be him. You go, ‘What would I do in his position?’ The weird, great pleasure of it is you want him to get away with it.”

That rooting factor is part of what makes “Ripley” so unsettling. Promoting the show, Scott says he’s often asked whether he’s ever met anyone like Tom.

“I think the more interesting question is, ‘How Tom Ripley-ish are you?’”

IMAGES

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr Ripley : Patricia Highsmith : 9780099282877 : Blackwell's
The Talented Mr Ripley: A Virago Modern Classic by Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Paperback)
The Talented Mr Ripley (book review)
Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, Hardcover, 9780349006963

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The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999): VHS Review

COMMENTS

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)
In 1955 her anti-hero Tom Ripley appeared in the splendid 'The Talented Mr Ripley', a book that was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere as the best foreign mystery novel translated into French in 1957. This book, too, has been the subject of a number of film versions. Ripley appeared again in 'Ripley Under Ground' in 1970, in ...
Mr Ripley's great talent? Making us like a killer and his crimes
Making us like a killer and his crimes. The Reading group verdict is in: Patricia Highsmith's amoral protagonist in The Talented Mr Ripley offers a queasy kind of entertainment - and an ...
'Ripley' vs. 'The Talented Mr. Ripley': The tiny change that makes a
00:00. Andrew Scott on crafting the iconic 'Ripley' in Netflix's new mystery series. In episode 1, "I: A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Tom obediently rolls into Brooks Brothers to retrieve the ...
In 'The Talented Mr. Ripley,' a Shape-Shifting Protagonist Who's Up to
This essay is part of T's Book Club, a series of articles and events dedicated to classic works of American literature.Click here to R.S.V.P. to a virtual conversation about "The Talented Mr ...
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
RIPLEY | Kirkus Reviews. THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. ....is a young man of no means, and expensive tastes, and his nerveless, conscienceless progression is traced from the time when Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve an expatriate son, Dickie Greenleaf. Ripley attaches himself to Dickie, is annoyed by the adhesive Marge who is in love with ...
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1956)
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith is a 1956 novel introducing Thomas Ripley, the sociopathic anti-hero who went on be the central character of four subsequent books. The five novels came to be known as "the Ripliad." The first installment was followed by Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water.
The Talented Mr Ripley
J.S. Monroe, Thriller and Crime Writer. "It's the first book I read where I was absolutely rooting for the villain, my entire emotional energy focused on willing him not to get caught. Even if you've seen the 1999 movie, the book is still worth reading. I love the rags-to-riches element, the settings: 1950s New York, the fictional ...
Read the earliest reviews of The Talented Mr. Ripley, which turns 65
The Talented Mr. Ripley—Patricia Highsmith's iconic 1955 novel in which a struggling small-time con-man evolves into a full-blown psychopath—is widely considered to be one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time (its stylish 1999 film adaptation is also a stone cold classic of the genre).It's been read as a coming-of-age tale, a forerunner of the era of imposture, and a ...
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1955 psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith.The novel introduced the character of con man Tom Ripley, whom Highsmith wrote about in four subsequent books.Its numerous film and television adaptations include Purple Noon (1960), starring Alain Delon, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), starring Matt Damon, and the 2024 series Ripley, starring Andrew Scott.
Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Talented Mr. Ripley
The 1999 movie version of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" helped restore her most famous novel to the spotlight, despite the uneven quality of the film itself. This 1955 book remains Highsmith's most stunning work, and it ranks high among classic noir literature and psychological studies.
Mini classic review: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr. Ripley blew my expectations out of the water. This psychological thriller novel gripped me from beginning to end. This psychological thriller novel gripped me from beginning to end. I can't believe how much I was rooting for a two-time murderer (one more and he's considered a serial killer) to get away with everything and ...
How The Talented Mr. Ripley Differs From The Book
"The Talented Mr. Ripley," the psychological thriller starring Matt Damon as the titular Tom Ripley and directed by Anthony Minghella, has maintained its popularity since being released in 1999.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley. Paperback - June 17, 2008. by Patricia Highsmith (Author) 4.3 7,192 ratings. Book 1 of 5: Ripley. See all formats and editions. An American classic and the inspiration for the new Netflix series. It's here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith's five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom ...
The Talented Mr Ripley: Book Review
First published in 1955, the novel saw four more books published in the series and have had multiple movie adaptions over the years. Keep reading for our book review and why you should read this classic psychological thriller novel! The Talented Mr. Ripley Summary . Tom Ripley is a young man in New York City that scams people to survive. He is ...
Quarantine Book Club: The Talented Mr. Ripley is the perfect escape
The Talented Mr. Ripley. novel and movie are the perfect escapist combination. The 1955 novel was adapted into a 1999 film with Jude Law and Matt Damon, and soon it'll be a Showtime series with ...
The Talented Mr. Ripley
A short summary and review of the book The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, with the quote "If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful, or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture." and questions to think about. Rite of Fancy book review and book recommendation. A Great Book. #ABookToReadAndLove #RiteOfFancy
The Talented Mr. Ripley movie review (1999)
The Talented Mr. Ripley. Villains usually last through only one crime novel, while heroes are good for a whole series. That's a great inconvenience for their authors, because villains are usually more colorful than heroes. Patricia Highsmith's novels about Tom Ripley are the exception, a series of books about a man who is irredeemably bad, and ...
Talented Mr. Ripley, The: Patricia Highsmith, Kevin Kenerly
A dark reworking of Henry James's The Ambassadors, The Talented Mr. Ripley—immortalized in the 1998 film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gywneth Paltrow—is an unforgettable introduction to this debonair confidence man, whose talent for self-invention and calculated murder is chronicled in four subsequent novels. Read more.
The Talented Mr Ripley
The Talented Mr Ripley was written by the late American author Patricia Highsmith who is revered as a great crime/psychological thriller writer. The aforementioned book demonstrates that claim well. Tom Ripley is a young man without any fortunes or principles for that matter! He survives by hustling which includes fraud, faking signatures on cheques, and…
The Dark Delights of The Talented Mr. Ripley
November 30, 2020 By Book Marks. Share: The Talented Mr. Ripley —Patricia Highsmith's iconic 1955 novel in which a struggling small-time con-man evolves into a full-blown psychopath—is widely considered to be one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time (its stylish 1999 film adaptation is also a stone cold classic of the genre).
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
BOOK REVIEW. by David Baldacci. ....is a young man of no means, and expensive tastes, and his nerveless, conscienceless progression is traced from the time when Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve an expatriate son, Dickie Greenleaf. Ripley attaches himself to Dickie, is annoyed by the adhesive Marge who is in love with Dickie and wary of ...
The Talented Mr. Ripley (film)
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 1999 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Anthony Minghella, based on Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of the same name.Set in the 1950s, it stars Matt Damon as Tom Ripley, a con artist who is sent from New York City to Italy to convince Dickie Greenleaf, a rich and spoiled playboy, to return home - however, after failing, Ripley takes ...
Of Tom Ripley and Patricia Highsmith, the Barnard Graduate
When Matt Damon's Ripley kills Jude Law's Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), it's ugly, awkward, and leaves a bad taste; the same is true in René Clément's Purple Noon (1960), when the most glamorously unlikely of all Ripleys, Alain Delon, prevails in a clumsy fight.
By the Book Interview With Judi Dench
But then I also adored "The Talented Mr. Ripley," by Patricia Highsmith. My husband, Michael [Williams], bought it for me as a holiday read. My husband, Michael [Williams], bought it for me as ...
The Talented Mr. Ripley: Highsmith, Patricia ...
One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, Ripley works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him on a deadly passage across Europe.
Jude Law, Andrew Scott unite at 2024 Met Gala for Talented Mr. Ripley
Andrew Scott and Jude Law united for an unexpected Talented Mr. Ripley crossover on the 2024 Met Gala red (er, green and beige) carpet. Law, who played Dickie Greenleaf in Anthony Minghella's ...
7 Best Book Adaptations Coming 2024
Release Date: April 4, 2024 | Book: "The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith. Continue reading. Cast: Andrew Scott, Johnny Flynn, Dakota Fanning, Eliot Sumner. After Matt Damon played Mr ...
Met Gala: Andrew Scott and Jude Law pose in Talented Mr Ripley
The Talented Mr Ripley was released to rave reviews. It landed five Oscar nominations at the 2000 Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Law.
Netflix' 'Ripley' show puts sinister spin on 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'
0:39. NEW YORK - In new Netflix series "Ripley," Andrew Scott plays one of pop culture's most notorious scammers. But offscreen, the Irish actor is usually the one getting duped. "I've ...
Watch The Talented Mr. Ripley
Con artist Tom Ripley charms his way into the lavish life of a charismatic heir — and takes drastic measures to keep his lies from catching up with him. Watch trailers & learn more.

Mr Ripley's great talent? Making us like a killer and his crimes

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Mini classic review: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

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How The Talented Mr. Ripley Differs From The Book

Tom of the book is already a criminal

Tom is more of a sociopath in the book

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The Talented Mr Ripley – Book Review

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The Dark Delights of The Talented Mr. Ripley

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May 13 – 17, 2024

THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

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Of Tom Ripley and Patricia Highsmith, the Barnard Graduate

The Photograph

The Week of Ripley

A New York Romance

“The Strangest Day”

The Barnard Graduate

Judi Dench’s Eyesight Keeps Her From Reading, but Not From Books

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The Talented Mr. Ripley Paperback – September 1, 1992

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Jude Law and Andrew Scott unite for a Talented Mr. Ripley crossover at 2024 Met Gala

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