Re: RARA-AVIS: Rachel and Ripley

From: Jeff Vorzimmer ( jvorzimmer@austin.rr.com)
Date: 24 Apr 2004


Welcome, Rachel, I too lurked about the list for a long time and recently started speaking up myself. I am a huge Highsmith fan as well.

I've read most of her books and, though I liked The Talented Mr. Ripley, there are other novels that are as good, if not better. To sum up her books, those from the 50s and 60s are the best. In fact, I haven't anything of hers from 1970 on that I really liked, that includes the later Ripley novels. Her novels seem to get a bit political in the 70s and beyond and she was a radical leftist.

Her best novels are Strangers on a Train, The Blunderer (the closest she comes to being truly hardboiled), Deep Water, This Sweet Sickness, Cry of the Owl and A Suspension of Mercy (truly excellent).

In a few months, just about everything she ever wrote will be in print
(probably for the first time ever).

Jeff

> Welcome to the group, Rachel. I have been wanting to
> read Highsmith now for over a year, but haven't gotten
> around to it. Other than THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY,
> what is the best Ripley novel? I've seen the movie
> for the one, and I don't much care for reading the
> novel after seeing the movie.

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