I read all of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels and her first was the best of the bunch.
The movie script was written by Anthony Minghella who, employing "literary license" did a great rewrite job.
I would recommend reading the novel first and then watching the movie. It becomes clear that Minghella's development of Ripley's character was stronger than Highsmith's. This doesn't diminish the novel, it enhances it in my opinion.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a completely absorbing masterpiece of crime fiction, in which Tom Ripley, age 25, goes to Italy to persuade his acquaintance Dickie Greenleaf to come home, at the behest of Dickie's father. Once in Italy, however, Tom becomes obsessed with Dickie and his companion, Marge Sherwood. Tension arises, which leads to Tom killing Dickie and appropriating his identity.

I hate calling The Talented Mr. Ripley a classic, because it might turn people off from reading an extremely enjoyable book. The thrill is not so much in the crime itself, but in Tom's emotional and psychological state and whether or not he will get caught. The story is told from Tom's point of view, so we almost feel sympathy for him and not necessarily shocked at his actions. However, the reader must never forget that his perceptions are far different from the reality around him. The premise of the book is nearly unbelievable in and of itself, but somehow Highsmith managed to make it believable. And her writing style is completely engaging.

The Talented Mr. Repley's Story is known for everyone. Almost. So what I am reviewing here is not the story but the dazzling and inruiging content.

I read this fabulous book ong ago, and I love more than the movie, although movie is put out in first class cinematography and actor and directing delivery. Books are better for imagination and consideration. In the movie hall there are two many other things going on and the time is not enough to discribe and oak tree like in a book.

The Talented Mr.s Reply is always puzzling my own beliefs, still also managing to satisfy my own belifs as well. The paradox of life and being human. The paradox of wanting and expecting verses lose one self's identitiy. Every thing tom did was to caress what he thought he had accomplished while he has never gotten it in the first place. Fascination and infatuation with things we don't posses or have really experience has become our greatest depression. To me Dickie is a very stable person. He lived life as it was given to him. Tom is the ordinary human always wanting more and sometimes taking it a little too far to satisfy what has become under its spell.

I know a lot will disagree with me and I am sorry i haven';t exactly talked about the content of the book.

a great book, read it and keep it.

"The Talented Mr. Ripley, " published in 1955, first of Patricia Highsmith's series of five Ripley novels, was fairly recently seen as a major motion picture, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Cate Blanchett; the movie was set in beautifully mild southern Italy, as is this book. The movie was much talked about: that's a good thing, if it brings the now half-forgotten Highsmith back to public notice. Because she had one nonstop, wicked imagination. The woman also wrote "Strangers on a Train," on which the famed Alfred Hitchcock movie is based, and published many other novels, and several collections of short stories, some of which still give me the willies.

The book opens as the orphaned Tom Ripley, handsome, charming, and psychopathic, raised in Boston by an uncaring aunt and struggling in New York, has a lucky day. Herbert Greenleaf, a rich shipbuilder of the city, purposefully makes the young man's acquaintance. Mr. Greenleaf greatly exaggerates the closeness of Ripley's slight relationship with his runaway son, Dickie Greenleaf, who's hanging out in Italy, unwilling to come home and into Dad's business. So Mr. Greenleaf sends Ripley to Italy like a latter-day Henry James hero, all expenses paid, to bring back the prodigal son. The financially hard-pressed Ripley, of course, has never been to Europe, let alone Italy, and he's easily seduced by the beauty, the sophistication, the comfort, the wines. He falls in love with the place; also, in a way, with handsome, charming, sophisticated young Dickie, and yearns to be just like him, and live just like him.

Commentators on the recent movie often remarked on the unspoken underlying homoerotic nature of the relationship formed by the two young men at play. So it should come as no surprise that the same underpinning to the relationship is to be found in Highsmith's book. At its opening, Ripley tells us that, when he was a child, his Aunt Dottie, who raised him after his parents' deaths, accused him of being a "sissy," as was his father. Furthermore, bearing in mind that this book was published in 1955, the adult Ripley clearly moves in New York's --covert-- gay community. He's left the East Side town house of a wealthy older man who enjoys taking in handsome young strays, and is crashing with a young decorator of store windows, particularly Third Avenue boutiques. Towards the end of the book, after a lot has been done that can't be undone, Ripley reflects that he did sort of fall in love with handsome, light-hearted, fickle Dickie; and that, had he not been so greedy for a more encompassing relationship, and so impatient about getting to it, things might not have turned out as they did. Indeed.

Highsmith was a sophisticated gal herself, who later in life chose to live in Switzerland with several Siamese cats; her work isn't for everyone. In her books, she frequently chose to reward, not the practitioners of the American virtues, but those who practiced the European vices. If you can accept an off-center world where things may not be what they seem, and danger ever lurks, go find the Ripley series.

Thomas Ripley is approached by Mr. Greenleaf, a successful business man, who asks Tom to travel to a small coastal village in Italy, for the purpose of convincing his son Dickie to return and join the family business. When Tom, financed by Mr. Greenleaf, travels to Italy and meets Dickie (whom he soon befriends and moves in with), he sees what he has always dreamed of being: someone who lives a life of leisure, never works, with no money worries. Tom -- who's probably bisexual -- more than falls in love with Dickie, he actually wants to absorb his friend's persona and become him. He realizes that because of a stronger than passing resemblance, plus prodigious impersonation talents (which include forgery), he can become more and more like Dickie; but he eventually comes to the conclusion, in his typical amoral fashion, that he has to get rid of Dickie in order to truly live the life he wants. The third main character in the book, Marge, is in love with Dickie and jealous of Tom, but never truly understands Tom's complete obsession.

If one has seen the movie, one cannot help but picture Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow (whose "Marge" has a stronger personality than the one in the book)in these roles. I didn't mind that, and could appreciate Patricia Highsmith's taut writing skills and ability to make the reader feel repulsed and sympathetic of Tom simultaneously. Sometimes I found myself routing for Tom, but most of the time I wanted him to get caught. My biggest problem with the book is that I couldn't accept how incompetent the Italian police were. One of the basic principles of a murder investigation is to follow the money trail -- which would lead even the most bumbling investigator to Tom. I doubt that even in the 1950's one could so easily impersonate someone else and get away with it. (The same can be said for "Ripley Under Ground," the next book in the Ripley series, but to an even greater degree).

Although certainly with its flaws, "The Talented Mr. Ripley," delivers as a riveting read about a disturbed but clever man who will stop at nothing to obtain his goals.