{"id":3374,"date":"2025-10-12T18:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T02:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3374"},"modified":"2025-10-12T18:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T02:44:12","slug":"review-the-talented-mister-ripley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3374","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Talented Mister Ripley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’d heard little bits and pieces about Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley<\/em> for a while but never got around to reading it. (I know there’s a movie,<\/a> but I haven’t seen that either.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is pretty much a character study of what I’ve seen described as a “charming sociopath.” I can’t really quibble with that characterization. Highsmith shows us this fellow in vivid detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a good read. The writing is great, the plot is suspenseful. I spent the book living in Ripley’s head in a way that’s difficult to pull off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I still find it a more interesting book to talk about than to read. Picking away at Ripley’s motivations – and maybe Highsmith’s intent – is a lot of fun. Probably worth reading just to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d heard little bits and pieces about Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley for a while but never got around to reading it. (I know there’s a movie, but I haven’t seen that either.) The book is pretty much a character study of what I’ve seen described as a “charming sociopath.” I can’t really quibble […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3375,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions\/3375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}