Patricia Highsmith invites us into the world of sociopath Tom Ripley. Tom, a small time con man is approached by the wealthy father of Dickie Greanleaf who offers him an all expenses paid trip to Italy to bring his ‘idle’ son home to work in the family business.
Tom, an orphan brought up begrudgingly by his aunt, initially wants to do the right thing by Mr Greenleaf as he finds him to be a decent man. To Tom he is not like the “slobs, riff raff and vulgarians” that he is normally acquainted with. This gives us an early indication that Tom has high aspirations for himself – to get away from his dead end jobs and become ‘someone’ in a social sense.
Arriving in Mongibello Tom finds himself in a world where lounging on the beach, boating and taking coffee in the village are everyday activities. We are not told out rightly that Tom’s character is homosexual but there is an emptiness in that side of his emotion that leads us to believe that he has does not have a sex life in any regard though would be leaning towards homosexuality due to his fondness for Dickie and the fact that he would have been happy to spend the rest of his life with him, along with his aversion to Marge. Tom is disgusted by Marge, he finds her sloppy in her actions and the way that she presents herself. In fact, he only begins to feel affection for Marge towards the end of the book when her belief in his lies helps him with Mr Greenleaf and the private investigator he has hired. However she became very close to being his third victim.
Things take on a sour note when Dickie feels that he is betraying Marge’s friendship by spending so much time with Tom. He starts to keep Tom at arms length and tells him that they were not and never had been friends and accuses him of being a leech. Tom is devastated by the rejection as he had built up such a fantasy about his future that this revelation would mean returning to being a ‘nobody’ and so he murders Dickie in a desperate bid to retain the life he is beginning to love and begins the process of making Dickie’s life his own.
His passing resemblance to Dickie is enough to fool those not closely associated with him but when it comes to Mr Greenleaf, Dickie’s friends and Marge he begins to spin a web of lives and deceit by living a double life as Tom and Dickie. Tom can lie so convincingly and intensely that he seems to actually believe them himself and sometimes finds himself horrified at the reality of what he has actually done, but can then just as easily gloss it over by convincing himself of the necessity of the act.
The premise of this book is quite frightening, as Ripley is such a dangerous pathological liar but by all intents and purposes comes across as a nice cultured mild mannered young man.
The imagery used to set the scene is excellent, you are in Mongibello, Rome or Venice, and at times you feel nervous for Tom when it looks like he has yet again invited trouble for himself and will surely be caught out this time…… The ending is against the norm as he actually gets away with it and you the reader is pleased that he has.
There are five novels to the Ripley series and several movies. The original Mr Ripley was played by Alain Delon in the 1960 French movie titled Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), followed by Dennis Hopper in The American Friend in 1977, the latest was an adaptation by Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon and Jude Law.
About the Author
Patricia Highsmith was born in Texas in 1921and her first novel in 1950 (Strangers on a Train) was made into a movie by Alfred Hitcock in 1951. She had re-written this novel on the suggestion of Truman Capote but it was the movie that catapulted her career. Highsmith had a difficult relationship with her mother, who was divorced from her father before she was born; she was also a bi-sexual and an alcoholic and unable to maintain a personal relationship for any length of time, preferring the company of animals. These personal problems were in part reflected in the character of Tom Ripley.
Highsmith was fascinated by case studies of patients with schizophrenia and other mental problems and this theme was explored in many of her novels. She died of Leukemia in 1995 aged 74 having lived reclusively in Europe.
Question – how did he get away with it! In today’s times DNA testing etc he probably would not have done.
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