I have never seen the film version of The Talented Mr. Ripley, although I was aware that the different characters were played by Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, so the entire time I was reading the book, I pictured all of them as the characters. Which normally I'm not a fan of (I like to create my own vision of who they are and what they look like based on the author's description, not based on a casting director's preference), but in this case, I kind of appreciated it. Although Gwyneth Paltrow felt a little miscast to me, but I'll wait to firm up that opinion until I actually see it. Which I'm very much looking forward to. Because I'm certain that after seeing the movie (and reading the book), I'm going to want to ditch it all and go live on the Italian seashore with sojourns up to Rome and Venice. And live like a rich American ex-pat (which I am most decidedly, not).
I won't give a lengthy recap of the book, but the main gist of the story is that Tom Ripley is a bit of a hustler in New York and is given the opportunity by a rich businessman to go find his son, Dickie Greenleaf, in Italy and try to convince him to return to the US to be around for his sick mother and to eventually take over his shipping business. But once in Italy, Tom develops a significant attachment (love?) for Dickie and the two form a fast, tight friendship. But the situation changes, and Tom makes a decision that he would prefer to continue his adventures in Italy and Europe as the person in Dickie that he idolizes.
The portrait of Tom Ripley is an excellent one. Of an insecure, petulant person who craves being accepted. So moments when people even present a hint of making fun of him or seeing him as a lesser person than he sees himself cause him to flip the switch in his mind and lose it emotionally, usually acting out in a violent way. He was a very convincing sociopath who, for the most part, didn't seem like a sociopath. And oddly, I kind of found myself rooting for him; rooting for him to "get away with it". And it kind of ruined the suspense of the ending for me knowing that there were 4 books written by Patricia Highsmith about Tom Ripley's "adventures". So sorry for possibly having ruined the ending for you too.
I loved having this book in the mix. I haven't read a good suspenseful type murder book in a while, particularly one that was coupled with such a solid portrait of the villain/main character and told from his point of view. I'd highly recommend it, particularly if you haven't seen the movie and don't know much about the book (as I did); I think I enjoyed it more this way. But I cannot wait to see the movie.
The next book I've already started on is The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. Similar to The Talented Mr. Ripley, I'm aware that this is a movie with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, and so I find myself picturing them in the 2 main roles, but beyond that, I don't know anything about the movie or storyline. This is a pretty short book so I'm guessing I'll be through it by the end of the weekend. Knocking books off the lists like a boss!
220 to go.
Side note: so I am painfully aware that in just over 7 short months, I will be hitting my 40th birthday. And while the original intent of this blog was to read all of these books by my 40th birthday, I have realized perhaps that I didn't fully appreciate the size of the task when I first started doing this in 2012. Because across the lists, which the duplicates removed, there are 326 books, and when I stared in 2012, I had already read 72. So yes, in just less than 7 years, I've only read 34 books...just slightly short of the 254 that I needed to read. My second post over on this blog pointed out how feasible this would likely not be (I would have needed to average about 3 books per month), so I'm not surprised that this didn't happen. In all fairness, I have been mixing in other non-list books, which brings my total read in 79 months to 42 books. So rather than 2 books/month, I'm averaging closer to 2 months/book. I hope to up this in the coming days, but in the meantime, I'll just keep moving that bar farther out. We'll reassess once the dreaded 4-0 crashes down on my head.
Happy Saturday!
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