2 Books on Life , Leisure, and Death in Italy
I purchased Last Summer in the City and The Talented Mr. Ripley from Jon Sandoe and Daunt Books within a month of each other without the intention to group them thematically.
Both are set in 1950s/1960s Italy and share themes of: young men away from home, tension with their fathers, despondency, futile attempts to “make something of themselves” in whatever lens they saw fit, dependencies on alcohol, and deaths through different means of multiple prominent characters.
Each is a novel that I am glad to have read once, though would likely not read either a second time. If I had to choose only one it would be Ripley for stronger plot and character development.
Last Summer in the City starts at the end, though you don’t fully realise it at the time, in a magnificent bay with a view of a dazzling spread of beach and the green of the low Mediterranean vegetation. A young man tell us, “I was dealt my cards and I played them. That’s all.”
He begins to tell the story which brought his bitter end. This novel is melancholic; a young man’s life battling alcoholism, navigating relationships whilst trying to find his own place in Rome, of the interference of jealousy, and of missed opportunities. It’s straightforward with relatable coming of age themes.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is the story of a an American grifter given the opportunity to travel to Italy on someone else’s dime. While abroad he is able to strike up a convenient friendship with affluent Dickie Greenleaf, transforming him grifter to murderer. The story follows his efforts to carve out a new and desirable life for himself while continually look over his shoulder.
It’s a dark tale, rife with deceit, set along the backdrop of coastal Italy and France. Tom Ripley twists the thought “Life is what you make it” into insert elements of how life may be lived as one individual based on the identity assumed.
You may have seen 1999 film with Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. I love the film though I haven’t seen it in years. I’m now due to rewatch to remember how closely it follows the novel, but even from watching the trailer, it seems they took quite a bit of creative liberty.
Quotes from Last Summer in the City
“She was from Venice.. I asked her why she’d left..
“It’s terrible, knowing you’re sinking into the sea.””
““Can you explain to me why you dried out?”
“Fear of success.”
“At what?”
“Dying,” I said. ”
““Try to pray,” I said.
“I don’t pray,” he said. “At most I say ‘please’.”
“I think about all the things unrealised, the children stillborn, the angels, the loves only imagined, the dreams crushed by the dawn, and I think about the things that are dead forever, the genocides, the trees felled, the whales exterminated, all of the the species that are extinct. I think about the first fish that survived being abandoned by the waters, that struggled and gave birth to us. I think that everything leads to the sea. That sea that welcomes everything, all the things that have never succeeded in being born and those that have died forever. I think about the day when the sky will open and, for the first time or once again, they will regain their legitimacy.”
Quotes from The Talented Mr. Ripley
“It was impossible to ever be lonely or bored, he thought, so long as he was Dickie Greenleaf.”
“The idea of going to Greece, trudging over the Acropolis as Tom Ripley, American tourist, held no charm for him at all.”
