Strangers on a Train
Ratings56
Average rating3.5
The two men in “Strangers On A Train” are despicable people. One, a well-off psychopath who berates women, and the other is a brilliant yet insecure fella who lacks a few basic moral filters. Perhaps número dos is not too bad in the beginning, but time will tell as the novel chugs along. Does the dynamic fit a twisty murder plot? To me, the book has flashes of brilliance, but some of the melodrama and filler irked me quite a bit.
Guy and Bruno meet on a train. A few drinks are shared, and before long, Bruno lays out a perfect murder. Bruno will murder Guy's wife; he is on his way to divorce, and Guy will in turn murder Bruno's father. Does this sound like a foolproof idea to you?
If you can get past the ‘perfect' meetup and subsequent murder coercing, I think you might enjoy it a bit more than I did. The chapter describing the deed was an eerie look into the mind of a psychopath and included quite a bit of introspection. This, coupled with the extreme detail, really set the tone for the rest of the book. Sadly, it takes until about the last third to really ramp up again. The middle portion of the book is filled with too much melodrama and philosophical takes, which I usually enjoy, but it sort of plateaued for me. It is understandable that these characters would get caught up in these ramblings of crime, but it hits it over the head a bit too much. It all could have been compacted a bit more. The alcoholism, the blackouts, and the staunch remarks started to get pretty grating. Also, it never really hits that sense of Annie Wilkes type crazy, if you know what I mean. Maybe we are just a bit desensitized to these types of stories, but back when this was published, I'm sure it was eye-opening.
On the other hand, the writing is pretty great. I read that the movie iteration was directed by Hitchcock, and this makes perfect sense. The stalking chapter in particular had a Hitchcockian feel to it, so I can see why he would gravitate toward it. Oh! One more point. The murder in and of itself was pretty clever. Back then, it would have been almost impossible for authorities to catch on to how it was committed. There is some detective work that shows up in the last third or so, but the ‘gotcha' moments are pretty far-fetched and frankly uninteresting in my opinion. I can definitely see other writers being influenced by the interrogation scenes as well. Karen Slaughter comes to mind.
All in all, it had some amazing moments, but I feel like it could be trimmed up a bit. My advice would be to go into it not expecting a cat-and-mouse chase or an in-depth character story, just some tension surrounding a few blokes who devise a creative act of evil. A more sinister version of My Dinner with Andre, for example.
Some great ideas and all but not for me. It was too much internal. Too long. And kind of dull.
Flagged a bit in the middle. I know Highsmith was trying to build suspense and show the descent into madness, but it felt a little too long for me.
Did not know this was originally written in 1900s.
A good engaging story with twists at the right points.
The narration did feel a bit monotonous at the start, but picked up as the story progressed.
Premise of the book was new, and interesting. The execution, not so much. No pun intended.
This is undoubtedly a psychological novel, but I found the long stretches of wallowing hard to endure. The characters are well drawn, in their psychology and their physicality, and Highsmith knows how to turn up the tension and surprise. Despite wishing some sections would hurry along, I did enjoy it and am encouraged to read more Patricia Highsmith.
There were some interesting ideas here, with the way that the two men kind of orbited around each other, and the inevitability of their downfall. The premise and idea of the murders interested me as well, but both characters were so annoying and made such stupid post-murder decisions that it was hard to sustain interest for the length of the book. This might have fared better as a short story.
Not as gripping as her other novels, but still enjoyable nonetheless. There is definite suspense, I was on edge the entire time I read this.
As a suspense novel, Strangers on a Train didn't read like I expected it to. Modern thrillers tend to follow the same formula: 200-pages of mediocre plot and characters all leading up to some twist or groundbreaking moment. But this classic novel by Patricia Highsmith is a slow burn where you pretty much expect everything that is going to happen, and it's all the more unsettling when it does.
Strangers on a Train was much better written than most thrillers I have read. I think some people go into it with the wrong expectations and think, “this is boring, why isn't the author messing with ME?” But this novel is more of a character study. The thought processes of Highsmith's characters are extremely believable, even when they are annoying or pathetic, and murder is treated simultaneously as a casual and grave occurrence. I found her writing extremely impressive and hope to emulate her in my own writing.
Also, there were definitely some Freudian overtones appropriate for the time (1950). It makes sense why Alfred Hitchcock chose to make a movie of it.
Two men randomly meet on a train. They are both fighting boredom and somehow Charles is very easy to talk to. Guy Haines ends up telling him all about his wife who cheated on him and is pregnant with another man´s child. With a little prodding from Charlie, Guy admits that he hates his wife. Charlie tells him he hates his father and begins to tell Guy about his plan for the perfect murder. His idea is that they kill for each other and no one would suspect either of them because they had no reason to kill people they didn´t know. Guy is horrified and quickly leaves thinking Charlie is just drunk. He was serious though as Guy finds out when he gets the call that his wife has been murdered. Charlie starts to call him and Guy realizes why.... Charlie wants him to finish the plan he had dreamed up.
When I first started reading this book I was intrigued by the story but not even half way I started to lose interest. The whole thing seemed so improbable. The more it went on the more outlandish it seemed. I made myself finish it to know how it ended but I found the discussion of murder in the first person was disturbing.
It amazes me how different relationships are now compared to in the past, but romantic and platonic. I enjoyed the action of this book, but was not too thrilled about the mental deterioration. Its important to life, yet rather boring to read.
Enjoyed this even more than I thought I would–felt very much like what would have happened if Camus had written murder mysteries. A little bogged down plot-wise in the middle, but more than made up for by the fun language and perspectives on human nature.
Really great. I love the Hitchcock film and was not expecting to like this more, but I did. There was a lag in the middle while Guy‰ЫЄs internal torture just went on and on and I thought it would never end, but I got through it (while suffering from a cold to boot) and the end arrived and it was worth the wait.
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“But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative. The splitting of the atom was the only true destruction, the breaking of the universal law of oneness. Nothing could be without its opposite that was bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now known to be one.”
I had to read this book for a Comp class in college, and I was pleasantly surprised. Since when do professors pick awesome books for forced reading? It really got me into crime fiction. I'm kind of a nerd, but I loved writing my literary analysis of this book. We studied it in parallel to Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Both are very intriguing books.