The Boy Who Followed Ripley (Paperback)

The plot is reasonably straightforward, but I get the feeling that much of the substance remains in the authors head - there are many instances of unlikely events that Tom for some unfathomable reason imagines will happen, and lo and behold, they do. He instantly recognises who the boy is, with little evidence. He immediately comes to the conclusion for no apparent reason that certain things will happen to the boy (I won't spoil it), they all happen. These in our world are called coincidences, in Ripleys world we are expected to swallow them one after the other.

I found myself skimming paragraphs, as I knew what would happen, because Tom had thought about it happening 10 minutes before.

The character of the boy himself is woefully undeveloped. The premise of the boy 'worshipping' Tom Ripley is thought sufficient to explain why the boy meekly does everything Tom tells him to, whether or not it makes sense.

Still, I'm not going to give it no Stars at all. I did manage to finish the book, and I certainly couldn't do any better!

This is not her best work. I found myself turning to my wife and saying 'Boy, this book is boring'. A first for me.

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The Boy Who Followed Ripley has just an interesting premise. A sixteen year-old American rich lad seeks out our rogue Tom Ripley and befriends him. We discover the boy has a dark secret, which he shares exclusively with Ripley. The boy's friendship extends into something like hero-worshipping. At this stage Highsmith could have used some clever homo-erotic angle, which would have been an interesting twist back to the original The Talented Mr Ripley novel, or at least made the boy into some sort of threat to Tom Ripley (..a man with many secrets). But no, the author merely injects some rather unoriginal mystery/criminal handy-panky which involves with boy and Tom Ripley. The only curious bit is that Tom Ripley is the good guy here, which is a bit of disappointment for the fans of the Ripley series.

On a much more minor note, I was unfortunate enough to read a 5-6 year old UK version of this novel. The publisher took liberties in translating many expressions into British slang, which is really appalling since the two main characters in this novel are Americans. It is downright bizarre to read a book where Americans use words like loo (toilet), pissed (drunk) and fag (cigarette). This is the first time I witnessed this in a UK edition Highsmith novel; I hope the most current edition of The Boy Who Followed Ripley is spared from this nonsense.

Bottom line: a very readable, but very mundane Ripley book. Disappointing and, sadly, not recommended.

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