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Sorry for the short review today; I’m a little bushed. But don’t think any less of the book in question, because The Talented Mr. Ripley is a riot of a creepy-crawly good time.

My second Patricia Highsmith, and one of her best known, was the perfect airplane book for my very long trip home from Australia recently. Highsmith is a master of engaging, disturbing stories, and I want more.

Tom Ripley is a con man and, I think I can say, a sociopath. He believe that society owes him something, and he’d rather not have to work too hard for it; and he lives in a time when class is very important. He knows what class he wants to belong to but can’t quite figure out how to get there. He’s struggling in New York City when he’s approached by a wealthy man who asks him to sail to Italy and collect his son, the heir to the family business and a vague acquaintance of Ripley’s. This being a paying gig and a chance to see the world and start anew – and escape the possible consequences of his latest scam – Ripley is happy to play a role, something he does exceptionally well. In the small seaside town of Mongibello, he gets along well with Dickie (the desired son) and initially with Dickie’s local American friend Marge, who may or may not be a love interest as well. But Ripley’s imbalances quickly begin to take over. He is jealous of Marge, and admires Dickie to a disturbing degree. He wants Dickie’s life. And soon, he thinks he has found a way to have it.

The storyline is loosely based on Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors, which makes several appearances in this book. Highsmith knows her way around a literary device.

The key to the appeal and memorability of this story is Highsmith’s ability to portray the completely amoral murderer, the obsessed and insane. This is just the author for those who like to be disturbed! It’s Ripley’s distorted sense of right and wrong that is most upsetting in this book. He is entirely, fully, deeply frightening. More so than any murder or wrongdoing, it’s the depravity within him that causes the goosebumps on the reader’s neck.

Now I really want to see the movie.

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Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith’s first novel, and deservedly received a good deal of attention (although never as much as one might expect in her native United States) and is admired as one of her finest. It’s a quietly frightening story about two men, strangers, who meet on a train, and find that each has a person in his life who he would rather were not. Guy Haines wishes he were rid of his adulterous and manipulative (and estranged) wife Miriam, so that he might marry the lovely and wealthy Anne. Charles Bruno hates his father, who limits Bruno’s access to his own money. It is Bruno’s idea that they could trade murders: each could have an alibi for his own acquaintance, and would never be suspected in the murder of the other’s, because there would be no detectable motive. Guy is disgusted by Bruno and his concept, and leaves the train without saying goodbye.

Bruno proceeds to murder Miriam without his consent. Guy suspects it may have been Bruno but can hardly believe in such a strange action on the part of a stranger. And then he begins to hear from Bruno. Guy’s relationship with Anne, and his work as an increasingly acclaimed architect, both suffer as he feels guilt for his involvement in Miriam’s death; and Bruno’s harassment increases, as he now feels Guy owes him the returned favor of killing Bruno’s father. Put very simply, Bruno succeeds in driving Guy a little crazy, until he carries out the murder; but they don’t get away with the second as easily as they do the first, essentially because Bruno (clearly a psychopath, and a raging drunk to boot) can’t leave Guy alone. He’s obsessed. I will interject here that I think the “perfect crime” conceived by Bruno would have worked if he could have remained a stranger to Guy; but he can’t. I will lay off the spoilers here, mostly, and tell you that they both meet unpleasant ends, in rather different manners.

The structure of the book is worth noting. The early tension of the two strangers’ meeting, and Bruno’s excited murder of Miriam, go by rather quickly. And the final action that resolves the fates of Guy and Bruno also happens in a rush. The middle section of the book is all interior: we see some of Bruno’s thought processes and degeneration, but him being the psychopath makes him rather less interesting than Guy, who was an essentially good and “normal” person when we met him on page 1. Most of the psychological drama takes place inside Guy’s head, where much more change takes place, and he goes slowly… crazy? Or, to look at it another way, slowly gives in to some nasty impulses. I’m rather in the first camp, but I think there’s room for debate.

Highsmith has done a fine job here of what I believe she set out to do: she creates a creepy-crawly atmosphere of fear that the worst lies within each of us, that we don’t really know our friends or family like we think we do, that the worst is only an obnoxious phone call or two away. The inside of Bruno’s head is a nasty place to be, but it’s Guy’s inner workings that are truly frightening. It is a very effectively executed novel.

That said, it won’t be for everyone. Even as I found myself admiring Highsmith’s craft, and riveted to the page, I was not always entirely enthused. For one thing, the extended psych-drama of the lengthy middle section of the book was a little slow-paced for me. And while she does an excellent job of putting me inside that scary brain of Guy’s, I’m not so sure that I wanted to be there. Thus, call this a well-executed novel that I did not really want. And part of that is Highsmith’s victory and (perhaps) her intention: to make her reader uncomfortable. But I think part of that, too, is just that psych thrillers are not my favorite things.

Exquisitely done, but not my cup of tea. Still interested in The Talented Mr. Ripley; and the Hitchcock movie version of this one.

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