The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

By Bright Summaries

Unlock the more straightforward side of The Talented Mr Ripley with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, which follows the con artist Tom Ripley as he travels to Italy and befriends Dickie Greenleaf, the son of an American shipping magnate, before killing him in order to assume his identity. This grants him the moneyed life of leisure he covets, but also forces him to spin an increasingly vast web of in order to stay one step ahead of Dickie’s loved ones and the authorities. The Talented Mr Ripley is the first book in Highsmith’s five-novel series known as the Ripliad, which traces the machinations of Tom Ripley. Highsmith’s other works include Strangers on a Train and Carol (initially published under a pseudonym as The Price of Salt).

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This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:

• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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• Language: English
• Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
• Release date: Mar 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9782808015431

Book preview

AMERICAN WRITER

Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921.

Died in Locarno (Switzerland) in 1995.

Notable works:

Strangers on a Train (1950), novel

The Price of Salt (1952), novel (republished as Carol in 1990)

Ripley’s Game (1974), novel

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer. She would become best known for her series of taut suspense novels, collectively referred to as the Ripliad, focusing on the criminal antics of the indomitable Tom Ripley, beginning with The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) and concluding with Ripley Under Water (1991). Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, initially published under a pseudonym, would also come to be known as one of the first lesbian novels with a happy ending, and was re-published under Highsmith’s real name in 1990 as Carol. Many of her works have been adapted for stage, screen and radio, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock (British film director, 1899-1980) in his 1951 film of Strangers on a Train starring Farley Granger (American actor, 1925-2011). Although Highsmith enjoyed a long and successful career as a fiction writer until her death from lung cancer in 1995, her early novels of the