This very well-known story centres on Tom Ripley, a young man who is sent to Italy to bring back the wealthy Dickie Greenleaf. Fascinated by Dickie’s luxurious lifestyle, Tom becomes obsessed and, after being rejected, decides to murder him. He then assumes Dickie’s identity, weaving lies to cover his tracks. This novel is quite horrifying, it shows what can happen when someone when ambition meets deception. Ripley is a frightening sociopath, hiding behind the façade of a charming young man. Quite chilling.
“They were not friends. They didn’t know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear.”