A review by erinlcrane
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

4.0

This wasn’t quite what I expected, but I enjoyed it overall. I thought it’d be a quiet story until the very end, but things come to a head before the halfway point. There’s a different kind of tension for the rest of the book.

My main complaint is that there’s quite a bit of tedium in here. The travel details and logistics get tiresome. This would’ve been better tightened up!

Tom I enjoyed a lot. This feels a bit like The Great Gatsby from Gatsby’s perspective. There’s a lot of class commentary and class envy. I like a drama of manners, where subtle behaviors or words hold a lot of meaning, and you get that here.

The queer part of the story surprised me. It’s certainly dated and, given what Tom does, could be seen as “bad representation,” but I think the reader ends up kind of rooting for Tom, so…