The Talented Mr. Ripley

Name: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Rating: 3.8943661971830985 (142 reviews)
Author: Patricia Highsmith
ISBN: 9780393332148

by Patricia Highsmith

3.9

(142 ratings)

273 pages2008W. W. Norton & CompanyISBN 9780393332148

Fiction Mystery Crime Thriller

About this book

An American classic and the inspiration for the motion picture starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.” Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. “Sinister and strangely alluring” (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.

Publication Details

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2008
Pages: 273
ISBN: 9780393332148
Language: en

About Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene. Her first novel, *Strangers on a Train*, has been adapted for stage and screen, the best known being the Alfred Hitchcock film released in 1951. Her 1955 novel *The Talented Mr. Ripley* has been adapted for film. Writing under the pseudonym **Claire Morgan**, Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, *The Price of Salt*, in 1952, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film. **Source**: [Patricia Highsmith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith) on Wikipedia