The Talented Mr Ripley (Penguin ELT Readers: Level 5: Upper Intermediate)
by Patricia Highsmith
|
List Price: ££5.90
Our Price: ££2.47
Your Save: £ 0.00 ( % )
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Longman
|
Average Customer Rating: 
|
|
Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780582448391
ISBN: 0582448395
Label: Longman
Number Of Pages: 96
Publication Date: 2001-02-12
Publisher: Longman
Studio: Longman
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Psycho Killer
Comment: A deeply amoral thriller, and none the worse for that. Highsmith's genius is to paint a chilling portrait of a sociopathic killer thief and conman who spends much of the novel coming within a whisker of being exposed - and as readers we want him to get away with it. The first of the Ripley novels, and for my money the best. Utterly absorbing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What a nasty character
Comment: At the time I originally wrote this review I'd not seen the 1999 film starring Matt Damon as Ripley. Now I've seen it and I much prefer the novel which was originally published in 1955.
Tom Ripley is a hanger-on. He desperately wants to be accepted into society, but loathes the people he aims to emulate. This makes him interesting; you can't be sympathetic but you do want to find out how he gets out of the spider's webs of lies and deceit he creates for himself.
He gets a job to go to Italy to persuade a wealthy American's son to give up his hedonistic lifestyle painting on the Riviera and return to his sick mother in the USA. Ripley attaches himself to Dickie Greenleaf like a limpet, alienating Dickie's friends and local ex-pat Marge in particular. But Ripley enjoys this new lifestyle so much, he takes it one step further, wanting to become Dickie Greenleaf...
Patricia Highsmith has created an amoral monster in Tom Ripley and the layers of intrigue never let you down. The writing flows beautifully with no padding so you just have to keep reading.
As for the film ... The look was fabulous, but I wasn't convinced by Matt Damon as Ripley. Ultimately though, I thought that the whole sexuality issue just muddied the plot; if Greenleaf had been a woman, Ripley would have done whatever he had to to achieve his ends!
Customer Rating:
Summary: classy detective fiction
Comment: Patricia Highsmith's first book in the Mr Ripley series sets the talented young man in Italy, at the request of Dickie Greenleaf's father. Ripley is charged with convincing Dickie to return home, closer to his ailing mother and closer to his father's boat building business. However Mr Greenleaf senior does not really understand Mr Ripley, he is a the young insurance executive but a man lost in New York, looking for any opening or scam. So when Ripley arrives in the small town of Mongibello and finds Dickie living an easy life surrounded by wealth and leisure he decides he might just stay a while. He befriends Dickie at first, but a conflict with Dickie's close friend Marge causes his alliance with Dickie to fall apart and Ripley soon comes to despise Dickie the person. But not, significantly, the image of Dickie - Dickie the icon. I'm sure I won't be giving too much away if I reveal that Ripley murders Dickie and impersonates him with relish across Italy and France, always trying to keep ahead of the police and the private investigator Mr Greenleaf senior has hired.
I read the book in a single, sharply focussed burst and felt the warm glow of satisfaction - still thinking about how immaculately the book was executed for days afterward. Indeed it's a tribute to Partritia Highsmith's insight, research and efficient prose that we feel a real part of Ripley's crimes and impersonations. Although he's a murderer, thief and scheming fraudster, never are we not routing for his escape and enduring freedom. Not an easy feat since I can hardly list a single positive trait in Ripley's character.
There are a few loose ends here. Ripley seems to be a totally sexless young man, perhaps the subtext is that he's homosexual. Marge suggests it and Ripley is highly offended by the suggestion. This is the closest we get even of the remotest sexual expression shown by Ripley. He seems to get all his kicks in impersonations and crime. I will add that this is the first in a series, so perhaps I'll soon find new depths in Ripley's character. It certainly has left me wanting more and I would recommend The Talented Mr Ripley to anybody.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Completely hooked
Comment: Having seen the film and blubbed incoherently, I thought I really ought to read the book. I finished it in two days, on and off, and found it to be a far better thriller. The film introduces a number of characters (Meredith) that do not feature in the book, and gives over to a relationship between Ripley and Peter.
The book was simply great - stop reading this and read the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fictional morality
Comment: Its a brave or stupid person who enters the world of Patricia Highsmith expecting a few hours of pulp fiction reading, 200 pages of standard and comfortable case solved, bad guy caught style crime writing. Instead, be prepared to find yourself rooting for a character who can kill in cold blood and feel little or no shame so long as he can cover those feelings with the more amenable sensations that italian wine, sunsets and lira can afford. What makes this all the more disturbing is the recogniton that for us to involve ourselves with him, Ripley must be a very human and likeable character. If we see something of ourselves in him, what is it that differentiates us - the fact that he appears to have no conscience, or the fact that he has the talent to convince himself that an appalling act can make the world so much better for him?
Tom Ripley is indeed one of the classic characters in modern fiction, borne from the mind of a talented and unique author. This is the book one should start with in any attempt to explore that mind, but take care!
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews: |
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Psycho Killer
Comment: A deeply amoral thriller, and none the worse for that. Highsmith's genius is to paint a chilling portrait of a sociopathic killer thief and conman who spends much of the novel coming within a whisker of being exposed - and as readers we want him to get away with it. The first of the Ripley novels, and for my money the best. Utterly absorbing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What a nasty character
Comment: At the time I originally wrote this review I'd not seen the 1999 film starring Matt Damon as Ripley. Now I've seen it and I much prefer the novel which was originally published in 1955.
Tom Ripley is a hanger-on. He desperately wants to be accepted into society, but loathes the people he aims to emulate. This makes him interesting; you can't be sympathetic but you do want to find out how he gets out of the spider's webs of lies and deceit he creates for himself.
He gets a job to go to Italy to persuade a wealthy American's son to give up his hedonistic lifestyle painting on the Riviera and return to his sick mother in the USA. Ripley attaches himself to Dickie Greenleaf like a limpet, alienating Dickie's friends and local ex-pat Marge in particular. But Ripley enjoys this new lifestyle so much, he takes it one step further, wanting to become Dickie Greenleaf...
Patricia Highsmith has created an amoral monster in Tom Ripley and the layers of intrigue never let you down. The writing flows beautifully with no padding so you just have to keep reading.
As for the film ... The look was fabulous, but I wasn't convinced by Matt Damon as Ripley. Ultimately though, I thought that the whole sexuality issue just muddied the plot; if Greenleaf had been a woman, Ripley would have done whatever he had to to achieve his ends!
Customer Rating:
Summary: classy detective fiction
Comment: Patricia Highsmith's first book in the Mr Ripley series sets the talented young man in Italy, at the request of Dickie Greenleaf's father. Ripley is charged with convincing Dickie to return home, closer to his ailing mother and closer to his father's boat building business. However Mr Greenleaf senior does not really understand Mr Ripley, he is a the young insurance executive but a man lost in New York, looking for any opening or scam. So when Ripley arrives in the small town of Mongibello and finds Dickie living an easy life surrounded by wealth and leisure he decides he might just stay a while. He befriends Dickie at first, but a conflict with Dickie's close friend Marge causes his alliance with Dickie to fall apart and Ripley soon comes to despise Dickie the person. But not, significantly, the image of Dickie - Dickie the icon. I'm sure I won't be giving too much away if I reveal that Ripley murders Dickie and impersonates him with relish across Italy and France, always trying to keep ahead of the police and the private investigator Mr Greenleaf senior has hired.
I read the book in a single, sharply focussed burst and felt the warm glow of satisfaction - still thinking about how immaculately the book was executed for days afterward. Indeed it's a tribute to Partritia Highsmith's insight, research and efficient prose that we feel a real part of Ripley's crimes and impersonations. Although he's a murderer, thief and scheming fraudster, never are we not routing for his escape and enduring freedom. Not an easy feat since I can hardly list a single positive trait in Ripley's character.
There are a few loose ends here. Ripley seems to be a totally sexless young man, perhaps the subtext is that he's homosexual. Marge suggests it and Ripley is highly offended by the suggestion. This is the closest we get even of the remotest sexual expression shown by Ripley. He seems to get all his kicks in impersonations and crime. I will add that this is the first in a series, so perhaps I'll soon find new depths in Ripley's character. It certainly has left me wanting more and I would recommend The Talented Mr Ripley to anybody.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Completely hooked
Comment: Having seen the film and blubbed incoherently, I thought I really ought to read the book. I finished it in two days, on and off, and found it to be a far better thriller. The film introduces a number of characters (Meredith) that do not feature in the book, and gives over to a relationship between Ripley and Peter.
The book was simply great - stop reading this and read the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fictional morality
Comment: Its a brave or stupid person who enters the world of Patricia Highsmith expecting a few hours of pulp fiction reading, 200 pages of standard and comfortable case solved, bad guy caught style crime writing. Instead, be prepared to find yourself rooting for a character who can kill in cold blood and feel little or no shame so long as he can cover those feelings with the more amenable sensations that italian wine, sunsets and lira can afford. What makes this all the more disturbing is the recogniton that for us to involve ourselves with him, Ripley must be a very human and likeable character. If we see something of ourselves in him, what is it that differentiates us - the fact that he appears to have no conscience, or the fact that he has the talent to convince himself that an appalling act can make the world so much better for him?
Tom Ripley is indeed one of the classic characters in modern fiction, borne from the mind of a talented and unique author. This is the book one should start with in any attempt to explore that mind, but take care!
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 through a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fiction making and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers to empathise with him even as his actions defy all moral standards.The novel begins with a play on James's The Ambassadors. Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends all moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs. Unlike many modernist "experiments", The Talented Mr. Ripley is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated manoeuvres of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lechter.-- Patrick O'Kelley
|
|
|
- Ask about this education product "The Talented Mr Ripley (Penguin ELT Readers: Level 5: Upper Intermediate)" in the forum
- Give review on this education product "The Talented Mr Ripley (Penguin ELT Readers: Level 5: Upper Intermediate)" in the forum
- Search related information in the forum
|
|
|
|
|
| OOEN Referral Program Spotlight |
 | | American Career College
American Career College (ACC) is one of the largest and most respected vocational training schools in the country. With campuses in Los Angeles and Orange County, ACC can provide you with the skills to become a Pharmacy Technician, Medical Assistant, Medical Biller/Health Claims Examiner, Optical Technician, Dental Assistant, Vocational Nursing, Computerized Business Specialist, or Surgical Technician. The best part? ACC can provide you with the skills you need in less than a year. | |  | |
 | | Apollo College
A rewarding career in healthcare begins with a degree from Apollo College. Choose from highly respected programs in Healthcare, Dental Assisting, Massage Therapy, and Veterinary Services. Our faculty of real-world professionals will provide you with the knowledge you need to succeed. Each of our six conveniently located campuses feature state-of-the-art laboratories. Apollo has helped over 45,000 graduates realize their dream of a career in healthcare. Now it’s your turn. | | | |
 | | Berkeley College
Berkeley College helps you launch your career in business. We help 96% of our graduates secure jobs in their chosen fields. That’s because we provide a real-world education that employers demand. We offer small class sizes, hands-on training, free lifetime career assistance, internships, and an extensive network of employer connections. Find out why we are a recognized leader in launching professional business careers. | | | |
|
What is OOEN Referral Program Spotlight?
OOEN provides comprehensive listing of online courses, degree programs, colleges and universities.
Also OOEN provides links to their information request pages; if you want to find out more about any course,
degree program, college or university, you can just fill out the form linked from OOEN and request information.
It is completely free for anyone to request information, and you can request information from as many colleges
and universities as you'd like. We list featured schools and their brief information
in this "OOEN Referral Program Spotlight" section of OOEN Store for Education,
in case that you are interested in taking a class or two or even pursuing degree program
through these featured schools.
|
|
|
