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A review by carlageek
Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
4.0
For its first half, Ripley’s Game is almost not about Tom Ripley. Tom sets its clockwork in motion, but from there the narrative stays with a family man and gentle artisan called Jonathan Trevanny, a member of Tom’s loose social circle of ex-pats in the French countryside. Jonathan’s arc is a thematic throwback in the Highsmithisphere, a nod in the direction of the thesis of Strangers on a Train: Anyone can become a murderer. Jonathan, allowing himself to be cajoled into a murder for hire, grapples with guilt and self-justification much as Guy Haines, the protagonist of Strangers, does, though Jonathan has far less to lose (he believes he’s at death’s door with leukemia), and the jobs he takes on are easier to justify; the victims are mafia thugs and capos.
But Tom relents halfway through, feeling remorse at having gotten Jonathan into a rather messily planned hit, and takes over both the agency and to some extent the story. From there on it’s familiar Ripley territory: he schemes to protect himself and Jonathan from their victims’ associates inevitable attempts at vengeance; he squirms with fear and uncertainty but keeps his head at the critical moment; he casually mutilates corpses to delay their discovery, all the while indulging his expensive tastes (in this episode, he buys himself a harpsichord, of all things), while Jonathan pretty much goes along with whatever Tom proposes. There are Highsmithian veins to mine in this half of the narrative as well—the two men bond over shared transgressions, and while there is a hint of Jonathan liking Tom more than he expects to (and perhaps even taking a bullet for him), there’s nothing like the intense compulsion that draws, say, Guy Haines to Charlie Bruno, or even Tom himself to Dickie Greenleaf, back in Ripley’s first installment.
I gave the book five stars on the day I finished it, on the strength of its having been marvelously entertaining. But unlike Ripley Under Ground, whose themes of shifting identity and the construction of identity became clearer to me the more I thought about it, Ripley’s Game grows more muddled; I can hear the Highsmithian notes through the noise only because I know what to listen for. Jonathan’s story is sympathetic, but he never quite carries you over the deep end as Deep Water’s family man and gentle artisan, Vic van Allen, does. Nor does the connection between him and Tom grow to a satisfyingly bizarre extreme; suppose he were to become fixated on Tom’s murders the way The Blunderer’s Walter Stackhouse does with Melchior Kimmel? Yes, Tom and Jonathan kill people together, but largely in self-defense; there’s too much rationality and not quite as much rationalizing. The trouble, of course, is that Highsmith set the bar too high with her own work; Ripley’s Game is a lot of fun, but relatively speaking, a little light on substance. The themes are there, but they’ve been plumbed more thoroughly elsewhere.
But Tom relents halfway through, feeling remorse at having gotten Jonathan into a rather messily planned hit, and takes over both the agency and to some extent the story. From there on it’s familiar Ripley territory: he schemes to protect himself and Jonathan from their victims’ associates inevitable attempts at vengeance; he squirms with fear and uncertainty but keeps his head at the critical moment; he casually mutilates corpses to delay their discovery, all the while indulging his expensive tastes (in this episode, he buys himself a harpsichord, of all things), while Jonathan pretty much goes along with whatever Tom proposes. There are Highsmithian veins to mine in this half of the narrative as well—the two men bond over shared transgressions, and while there is a hint of Jonathan liking Tom more than he expects to (and perhaps even taking a bullet for him), there’s nothing like the intense compulsion that draws, say, Guy Haines to Charlie Bruno, or even Tom himself to Dickie Greenleaf, back in Ripley’s first installment.
I gave the book five stars on the day I finished it, on the strength of its having been marvelously entertaining. But unlike Ripley Under Ground, whose themes of shifting identity and the construction of identity became clearer to me the more I thought about it, Ripley’s Game grows more muddled; I can hear the Highsmithian notes through the noise only because I know what to listen for. Jonathan’s story is sympathetic, but he never quite carries you over the deep end as Deep Water’s family man and gentle artisan, Vic van Allen, does. Nor does the connection between him and Tom grow to a satisfyingly bizarre extreme; suppose he were to become fixated on Tom’s murders the way The Blunderer’s Walter Stackhouse does with Melchior Kimmel? Yes, Tom and Jonathan kill people together, but largely in self-defense; there’s too much rationality and not quite as much rationalizing. The trouble, of course, is that Highsmith set the bar too high with her own work; Ripley’s Game is a lot of fun, but relatively speaking, a little light on substance. The themes are there, but they’ve been plumbed more thoroughly elsewhere.