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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780393321982 ISBN: 0393321983 Label: W. W. Norton & Company Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 256 Publication Date: 2001-08 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Studio: W. W. Norton & Company Editorial Review: Product Description: A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: Strangers on a Train, Highsmith's first novel and the source for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1953 film. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Tension to PerfectionThe Fiction Writer should put tension on every page of a novel, in every scene, and select every word to forward that tension. Patricia Highsmith's debut novel, Strangers on a Train, could be a textbook to these principles. From the first line, "The train tore along with an angry irregular rhythm." she keeps the reader off balance and anticipating with dread every new scene. It's fantastic. On a train, Guy Haines sits next to Charles Anthony Bruno. Bruno forcefully intrudes on architect ... Read More Rating: - Powerful, rich with suspense.Strangers on a Train is the debut novel of the highly acclaimed Patricia Highsmith. And what a gut wrenching, suspense saturated debut novel it is. Guy Haines is an up and coming architect who meets the malevolent and seriously disturbed Charles Bruno on a train. Guy unwisely reveals a little too much about his personal life to Bruno and subsequently finds himself a party to murder most foul. The psychologic torment Guy undergoes because of his involvement in this nefarious crime just leaps ... Read More Rating:  - early highsmithi'd hesitated when it came to reading this book. like everyonelse i'd seen the hitchcock movie and i wasn't sure i wanted to deal with the original.the book is good but my reticence was justified.this is early middling highsmith.it's strangely"girlish".given highsmiths misogyny,that is surprising.it's also too cozily bourgeois.no i'm not a bourgeois basher!but there are points in this book where you can't wait for highsmith to whip out here nasty acid tongue and it just does'nt happen.i almost cringed while ... Read More Rating: - Subtly menacing, every sentence slowly picking at your sanity...Patricia Highsmith was ahead of her time, constructing the perfect crime novel long before it would truly be appreciated. Sadly she was never as famously accepted as she could have been while still living, but thanks to reprints and reissues her novels are being given a new breath of life. Now I say all of this and I have only had the pleasure of reading one of her novels, but that novel was so articulately perfect that I have nothing but the utmost respect for the late author. `Strangers on a Train' is so ... Read More Rating: - Stinging suspense--one of Highsmith's bestWhat's interesting is the powerful difference between this novel and Hitchcock's film version. In the novel, Guy Haines is an architect rather than a tennis pro (the film), but this is not the main difference. Without giving anything away, there is a major difference plotwise, and if you read the novel AFTER having seen the film (as I did), your jaw drops open at how big a difference this really is. While Hitchcock's film is a great cinematic classic, Highsmith's novel is, I think, an even better ... Read More |
