The Boy Who Followed Ripley (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
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 actually abandoned (with about fifty pages left to go). So, what went wrong? Well, I think this reaffirms my belief that writing any type of series cannot – and will never – be done successfully. There is just no way (if the first in the series is good) to recapture the magic of that original idea. The Ripley novels are no exception, though Highsmith did try her darndest. We go from the outstanding first novel, plummet to the subpar second (Ripley Under Ground), rise exponentially with the third (Ripley’s Game) and now crash headlong into a pile of manure with this one. It just goes to show that even the greats like Highsmith are not all-powerful and incapable of making mistakes. So, what exactly is my beef with The Boy Who Followed Ripley? There’s an interesting germ of an idea here – Tom Ripley, the amoral sociopath, takes on a young boy almost as an apprentice – but it’s just handled so bloody poorly, and is so boring that I’m genuinely surprised that 1. I didn’t abandon it sooner and 2. That Highsmith even wrote this. I guess I thought, given the calibre of Highsmith novels that came before, I’d find something to like about this as I kept reading. No, no, no. We go from Belle Ombre, to meeting Frank Pierson, someone who really likes Tom. The start in fact is the most promising part of this novel, for sure. Frank and Tom develop a pretty strong bond, with Heloise even remarking if the two are “faggots”, which is brought up and then never mentioned again. Long story short, Frank gets kidnapped while they’re in Berlin, and what follows has to be the driest, most uninteresting, unengaging travelogue in any book ever. Gee, I really don’t like writing all this, but it has to be done. What was an annoying constant mentioning and referring of weird German suburbs and names incomprehensible to the average reader at the end of Ripley Under Ground now takes up almost an entire third of the novel, very unfortunately. Even before Frank is captured, he and Tom go about Berlin, seeing the zoo, going to bars and so on, for like 100 pages. Nothing happens of interest except Highsmith shows off that she has done research about Berlin or has been there extensively. This really is Highsmith’s Achilles heel, and I was willing to overlook it mostly in Ripley Under Ground, but not here. You know that saying in writing - show don’t tell? Well, Highsmith seems to think that constantly telling the reader weird German words like Kruezberg or Glienicker-Brucke or Kurfurstendamm adds anything whatsoever to the story being told. It doesn’t. At all. There are very few interesting moments here, and the signature existential meanderings and brokenness of Highsmith characters that I care about are seemingly missing. All we get is a smuggler named Eric Lanz who is creepily welcoming to Tom, and Frank, who does have a darkness in him, but it’s not touched on nearly enough to warrant this book being read. The entire story really is rescuing Frank from the kidnappers. We see Tom getting all the ransom money from the banks (how exciting), dressing up in drag (wow), and going to the zoo. When Frank comes back they go to France and … here I stopped reading. I did skim to the end, however, and found out Frank kills himself. What the heck?I guess why I dislike this book so is that it hardly even feels like a Ripley novel. When writing this one Highsmith wanted to show Tom Ripley as a more compassionate person, so we see him … doing his taxes and … trying to save a boy he barely knows, but all that is boring and uninteresting. The character in this book doesn’t even feel anything like the Tom Ripley I’ve come to know and love over the course of three books. Hell, at least in Ripley Under Ground Tom Ripley felt like Tom Ripley. In this one, he’s almost a “good guy” and that doesn’t work at all. It’s like he kills the kidnappers and does all he does to save Frank, almost like it’s justified, for the greater good. But the exact opposite made the character so compelling, his killings were never that justified or logical, Ripley either killed because a) he wanted to be someone else b) he wanted to protect is illegal business or c) he was just bored of his safe life. The character is unbelievable here, and coupled with Highsmith’s insistence to write a travelogue of almost the entirety of Western Berlin, makes this for a truly unengaging read. I wish it were different, I really do. I don’t like negatively reviewing an author whom I really respect very much so, but I will not be swayed by that, I must review as objectively as possible, and the objective question I usually ask myself while consuming a piece of media is: Am I enjoying myself, am I having a good time?And with most Highsmith books the answer is usually, yes, yes I am. But not Boy Who Followed Ripley, in fact, I was hesitant and reluctant to continue reading it, I didn’t want to, because I wasn’t enjoying myself. Sadly, it looks like the end of the road for the Ripley books for me, I do not think I can read the final one, though I just might try, but I think I need a bit of a break from Highsmith after this.
Wow, Highsmith throws you yet another curve-ball with this novel. Some of the peer reviews here discount this entry in the series but I think they misunderstand what Highsmith was up to here and drastically underrate it. Despite all appearances, I hesitate to even call it a crime novel. A young American boy, Frank, the heir of a very wealthy family, kills his father and flees to France to hide from his guilt, though everyone thinks it was either an accident or suicide. But Frank knows better. Frank looks up Tom because he read about him during the Derwatt art-fraud affair (Frank's father even owns one of the forged paintings) and does follow-up research on Tom regarding the Dickie Greenleaf affair, and Frank has decided to tell Tom everything about his own crime. Tom takes an interest in the boy and keeps him at his house, then goes with him to Berlin in an effort to entertain the boy and persuade him to go back home to his family. Frank's picture is in the news though, and a bunch of German kidnappers snatch him from Tom. With the usual mix of wit and luck Tom manages to get Frank back. But this typical crime-fiction plot description really only covers a portion of what the novel is all about. This is more of an existentialist novel, a rumination upon the nature of responsibility and guilt and even mortality, upon what it means to human. The young man stirs some semblance of emotions in Tom Ripley that he has never felt before and he actually cares for and strives to help the boy weather his existential crisis. But Tom is ultimately unable to help Frank through his crisis of conscience, since he has never had much of a conscience himself and thinks this is little more than a phase through which the boy will pass with a little understanding and assistance. In addition, this is probably the closest Tom Ripley ever comes to facing his latent homosexuality, as he arranges to meet the kidnappers at a gay bar for the ransom drop and proceeds to go there disguised in drag for the purpose of tailing them to their lair. This sequence is outrageous! If I were to judge this purely as crime fiction, I might not rate it among the best, but I actually suspect that this is the greatest work of art Highsmith ever produced. (Oh, and dig those references to Lou Reed and The Ramones!)
What do You think about The Boy Who Followed Ripley (2008)?
Two stars means it was ok, ok? Not great, but not unreadable, either. The two stars is a pity, because I've been on a Highsmith reading jag, or rather a Ripley jag. Highsmith's stock is on the rise, you see, and quite rightly so. So, like I said (did I say?), two stars is a bit of pity."The Persian Boy" was published in 1972. This fact is not so tangential as you might suppose, because The Boy etc. was also published in 1972. Both are by women (TPB is by Mary Renault, but I bet you knew that already, didn't you), and both these women were lesbians. It wasn't easy being a lesbian prior to the 70s (probably isn't easy now), but in that decade the ice began to crack, social acceptance began to be the norm, and so we have TPB and TBWFR. And a lot like them.TPB is a far, far better book. Gore Vidal, in his review of that year's best offerings, said that the question it posed was whether a great world-conquering military commander like Alexander the Great could find true love with a teenage castrato slave-boy. The answer, apparently, was Yes. This brings us to the problem that lies at the core of TBWFR: the question it doesn't quite dare pose is whether a bone-idle, charming, essentially ruthless sociopath can find true love with bone-idle, charming sixteen year old boy from New England. We have over 300 pages of not quite getting to the point. I longed, how I longed, for the two them to get between the sheets, however discreetly, however far off camera, and do something about the love that Highsmith doesn't quite dare name, but they, and she, never do, or does. Otherwise the book is pretty well plot-free. Nothing really happens. Pity.
—Philipc
The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980) was, I am very sorry to say, a bit of an ordeal. If it had been anyone other than Patricia Highsmith I think I would have stuck to my fifty pages rule and jumped ship! The story had potential but Highsmith just meanders and rambles on, giving us page after page of detail about the most inconsequential details of domestic life. There is also a strange sexual ambiguity about Ripley’s association with Frank, the boy of the title, which I found repetitious and annoying. Highsmith seems to find it amusing to place Ripley with Frank in gay bars, or having to share a three-quarters bed; Ripley actually dresses up in drag at one point. The only action in the book is confined to one short rather poorly set up section of the story; it’s never really explained why Ripley suddenly acts on impulse quite in the way he does. Here’s a (mercifully) brief example of some of the superfluous prose Highsmith subjects us to in this book:"Antoine and Heloise exchanged French kisses at the door, smacks on the cheek, one, two. Tom hated it. Not French kisses in the American sense, certainly nothing sexy about them, just damned silly."I had planned on completing what is known to Highsmith fans as the Ripliad but this book has put me off the idea; also the reviews on Goodreads for the final book Ripley Under Water would suggest it’s little better than its predecessor. So I think I’ll bail out on Ripley and concentrate on discovering Highsmith’s earlier more celebrated books.
—M.J. Johnson
Although I am never really bored by this writer, the kidnapping of the “boy” is the most engaging section of this novel. Though some may find Frank Pierson an interesting character, I was soon disappointed to see that he was reduced to a maudlin mass of ennui. There is nothing exciting or dramatic (or even interesting, for that matter) in a character who essentially "mopes" his way through an entire novel, brooding on the boorish notion that his girlfriend has gone off with another boy because he has travelled to France. Of all the Ripley books this was the one I was a bit disappointed in. Read it if you intend on reading all of them, but know that it does not reach the surprising heights (or depths) of psychological insights of her earlier books.If you like character development with long stretches of little plot development, this book will be of interest to you. If you crave the constant action of The Talented Mr. Ripley, you might find it a slow read. I was somewhere in between.
—Carol
