The Talented Mr. Ripley

By: Patricia Highsmith

Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers.

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 he grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante.

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.

©1955 Patricia Highsmith. Copyright renewed 1983 by Patricia Highsmith. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"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. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fictionmaking and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers into empathizing with him even as his actions defy all moral standards." (Amazon.com review)

"[Highsmith] has created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger." (Graham Greene)

"One of our greatest modernist writers." (Gore Vidal)

A high-wire, high-risk, high-reward masterpiece

Highsmith is amazing. She alludes to Henry James, plays with a Nabokovian style, throws in James Cain's dialogue, and blends it all with a Camus-like modern existentialism. Face it, pretenders, The Talented Mr. Ripley is an amazing psychological crime novel. This is one of those books which should be used as evidence to highlight the case that some of the best literature of the 20th Century came out of genre fiction. The novel is high-wire, high-risk, high-reward masterpiece. It leaves me amazed the Cure didn't just write their existential anthem to Highsmith:

I can turn
And swim away
Or I can raise up my oar
Staring at a boat
Staring far ashore
Whichever I chose
It amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing.

I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm lying Tom Ripley
Killing a Signor.

Kept my interest

Kept my interest, but this is one of the most unrealistic books I've ever heard. Mr. Ripley would not be talented if anyone he encountered was average. Pretty silly, but I wanted to know how it played out. I have to give it a fair rating for entertainment value, but for reality it would get zero stars.

A Talented Performance

Would you consider the audio edition of The Talented Mr. Ripley to be better than the print version?

Is the audio version of this book likely to be better than the text version? Having never read the text version, I cannot say. However, I can say that the narration adds a sense of immediacy to the action that builds suspense.

What other book might you compare The Talented Mr. Ripley to and why?

This book reminded of Shakespeare's play, Richard III. Both gave a first person perspective to crime and had a strangely sympathetic criminal narrator.

Which scene was your favorite?

I didn't really have one favorite "scene" in this book. Instead, I found myself appreciating all of the work and rehearsal that Tom Ripley put into his efforts to assimilate into his surroundings.

If you could rename The Talented Mr. Ripley, what would you call it?

I wouldn't dream of renaming this book. The name is perfect as is.

Amazing narrator

I cannot imagine this book being as enjoyable if the narrator was someone else. We need more of Mr. Kenerly here on Audible.

Better Than The Movie!

Excellent Narration! Intriguing and fascinating! Love the details left out of movie. The movie added and omitted quite a bit. I was able to get more insight on Thomas Ripley and how his mind worked. Though I did thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I highly recommend the novel.