Murder, motive, multiple clues...Ripley Under Ground has all the stuff of a mystery, but it is not a whodunit. It is rather a mystery turned inside out. The last person you want to see succeed in this suspenseful novel is the detective.The protagonist, Tom Ripley, is a very likable, very intellig...
In many ways I enjoyed this book more than "The Talented Mr Ripley". I guess it's because Highsmith is more accomplished as a writer but I suspect it's because it's set in France and Ripley spends a wonderfully privileged life gardening, eating, and reading. It's true escapism married with murder...
I've been dying to read a Ripley book since I saw the Matt Damon film in the movie theater, some years ago. I decided to read "Ripley's Game" because I knew there was a film adaptation, and for once John Malkovich seemed perfect for the part. I had read a profile on Highsmith -- about her insane ...
This is a stunning book, and (for a change) an equally stunning movie. Ripley is chilling in his attitudes to those around him, and yet one has a curious empathy with him. It's fascinating to read; the explosive moments of violence, mixed with quiet moments of introspection. It's as though he has...
[7/10] I can do a number of things – valeting, baby-sitting, accounting – I’ve got an unfortunate talent for figures. No matter how drunk I get, I can always tell when a waiter’s cheating me on a bill. I can forge a signature, fly a helicopter, handle dice, impersonate practically anybody, cook –...
Damn, is the word that comes to mind for this book. Not, DAMN! or Dayyum! but just … damn. I wanted to like Ripley Under Water so much more than I did. This series of books really has been a bumpy rollercoaster ride. Let me show you.The First Book (Talented Mr Ripley) – Impeccably paced, with hon...
As Michael Dirda assured me in his reviews of Patricia Highsmith books, I really enjoyed Edith's Diary and whipped through it quickly. Like watching a train wreck, I could not keep from reading about Edith’s devastating emotional and mental decline. She seems to operate well creatively (writing...
What genre is Deep Water? It teeters between thriller and crime, has Poe flavours and a Hitchcock air, but altogether it seems to be something quite unique. What is certain is that I will be reading more Patricia Highsmith. Deep Water has all the qualities of a good novel and great thriller, but ...
Nonostante il libro sia una lettura di certo godibile e scorrevole, è un po' spiacevole constatare che Ripley da cinque anni a questa parte (letteraria) s'è un po' ammosciato. Forse i soldi in tasca, la nuova moglie a letto e la bella villa con tanto di domestica fidata hanno un po' oscurato la s...
This is probably one of the most difficult books I've ever had to review. The book itself wasn't difficult, I don't mean that but it was, well, really different. The book is about an average American family, the Aldermans, who are changed for the worse when Richard, the father, believes a miracle...
Oh, no. The Boy Who Followed Ripley, judged based on its own merits, is a boring book that has almost no tension or excitement in it whatsoever. I feel blasphemous writing that, especially from just previously finishing the superb Ripley’s Game. This, in fact, is the first Highsmith novel I have ...
'Nothing That Meets the Eye' confirms Patricia Highsmith as a great American writer. If only Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) had been alive to see the thunderous critical response to the publication of the best-selling 'The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith' in 2001. Now the Highsmith renais...
The last time I posted about Patricia Highsmith's The Two Faces of January, I was just over halfway through the book and loving it. I found it suspenseful and full of sexual tension and told you that I could hardly wait for the thriller to be adapted for the screen. I've now finished the novel an...
"E o que está certo e errado, supunha Ingham, é aquilo que as pessoas que nos rodeiam dizem que é.(...) as pessoas vivem segundo um código moral, no qual lhes tinha sido ensinado a acreditar desde pequenos. (...) Até que ponto se manterá, até que ponto se poderá actuar segundo ele, se não for o m...
The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with this work that reveals the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life. The stories collected in Mermaids on the Golf Course, first published in 1985, are among Highsmith's most mature, psychologically p...
Χμ... Είναι αλήθεια πως το υποτιμάς λίγο στην αρχή. Κάτι από την απλότητα της γραφής της συγγραφεως, κάτι από την ευθύτητα και την ειλικρίνειά συνωμοτουν στο να μην την παίρνεις και πολύ στα σοβαρά ή και ( ακόμη χειρότερα ) να ολίσθησεις στο ατόπημα να την θεωρήσεις προβλέψιμη. Χα! Μέγα λάθος!!! ...
I think my last Highsmith review accurately described my ambivalence toward her work: With Highsmith, I generally feel that I haven't been left with very much. People are brought together by random circumstances; their weaknesses are their downfall, or the downfall of others; innocence is corrupt...
Move over Ripley.If you read suspense and have not read Patricia Highsmith yet, first of all, shame on you and second, you have some weird and wonderful (and terrifying) books ahead. No one wrote like Highsmith did, and at the time she did. Her novels deliver in the classic thriller/mystery/suspe...
Right off the bat, I will admit that this is not one of my favorite Highsmith novels. It's a departure from her usual stuff, which is okay, but she really wasn't all that terrific at putting together an existential whodunit novel which, when all is said and done, describes what I think she was a...
I first encountered the work of Patricia Highsmith, in the shape of the novel The Glass Cell, when I was in my mid-teens. I got perhaps fifty pages into the book, loathing every moment of it. A few years later I tried one of her Ripley novels (Ripley Under Ground, I think); this time, though abho...
Jack Sutherland perde a carteira ao sair do táxi, mas a história só começa verdadeiramente quando Ralph Linderman lha devolve, uma hora mais tarde. Um acontecimento curioso e inesperado, na cidade de Nova Iorque.Jack Sutherland é ilustrador de profissão. Apesar de não ser famoso, tem bastante suc...
Finally published in the United States ten years after Patricia Highsmith's death, Small g, in the words of her biographer Andrew Wilson, is an "extended fairy tale suggesting that…happiness is precarious and…romance should be embraced." In unmistakable Highsmithian fashion, the novel opens in a...
As I posted in a status update yesterday afternoon on goodreads (at page 209),"I just love Patricia Highsmith's work. I'm sitting here reading this today, and my tension level has been ratcheted up more than a few times throughout this story. I so want to peek at the end to make sure everything c...
About a year ago, I discovered the "Most Read Authors" feature on GoodReads. I discovered two things that bothered me: 1) James Patterson was in my top 10 most read authors & 2) the first female author appeared in the 25th spot (J.K. Rowling and only because there were 7 Harry Potter books). ...
"Talvez a identidade, como o inferno, estivesse somente nos outros."É muito difícil atribuir um género literário às obras da Patricia Highsmith, porque a autora vai além dos géneros conhecidos e estabelece as suas próprias regras. Não é mistério ou suspense. Não se foca no crime ou nas relações h...
Disomogenei, mancando un fil rouge come in "Piccoli racconti di misoginia", questi racconti sono imbibiti di inquietudine.Sottile come tela di ragno in "Un altro ponte da attraversare", macroscopica ne "La tartaruga", claustrofobica ne "Il guardalumache".L'accento, apparentemente posto sul plot d...
I really have a love/hate relationship with Patricia Highsmith. And I feel like it's mostly hate, but sometimes I am drawn to her work. Writing about something usually makes me like it better, and that's what happened for me with "The Mysterious Cemetery," which is a really cool short story. That...
An ugly grinning face peered at her not a meter from her own face, with one big fist gripping an iron bar, so he could raise himself to her level. “Swine!” Isabella said between her teeth, ducking at the same time. “Slut!” came his retort. “Ha, ha!”...
She was to meet him one street away and around the corner of the street in which she lived. His car was an Audi four-door, brown, and if she didn’t see it parked, she would see him strolling along, wearing a light-colored jacket. Can you invent a reason to stay out lon...
Hazel made an effort with the dinner—cold cucumber soup, a complicated veal and bacon and grated cheese dish, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and a lemon soufflé for dessert. She was in a good mood. “Ah, my favorite dish. You’re wonderful,” Sullivan said to her. He had s...
Karl would pick him up at 10.40 a.m. to drive him to the hospital. Rudolf would come along too. Jonathan had been sure of that.‘Good luck,’ said Reeves. ‘I’ll see you later.’Jonathan was downstairs in the lobby, reading a London Times, when Rudolf walked in a few minutes early, Rudolf was smiling...
The husband was an almost unmitigated cad—almost, because his sadism, selfishness, philandering, and alcoholism had to be relieved by some minor good qualities, or he could hardly be believed. At any rate, no one could possibly like the husband, and Sydney could foresee The Whip’s strangle-murder...
Letters had their time and place, they influenced, but they were not action, after all. He was up early Sunday, shoveled the snow from his steps, and then set himself to finish the sanding and shellacking of a piece of wood that he chose to call a figurehead, actually a se...
She looked away from her machine, sideways towards the hall door, and saw something about two feet high, something grayish black, which after a second or two moved and was lost from view in the hall. Eleanor rubbed her eyes. Her eyes smarted, and it was delicious to rub them. But since she was su...
Penn Knowlton had realized that as soon as he realized he was in love with Ginnie Ostrander—Mrs. David Ostrander. Penn couldn’t see himself in the role of a marriage-breaker, even though Ginnie said she had wanted to divorce David long before she met him. David wouldn’t give her a divorce, that w...
He was either at the Plage or taking a walk along the beach, Ingham thought. Ingham straightened up his rooms a little, gave them a sweep, then went out with the double purpose of finding Jensen and buying some flowers. Flowers in a vase, even if the vase was a glass, would look nice on the table...