I was not impressed with the novel, but to be fair, it was her first and I have not read any subsequent work. I might do at some point but going by this one I shan’t be putting my skates on. I must also spell out that all judgments are subjective, and my comments should be taken with that belief in mind. By the same token, however, so is judgment
I suspect for most of us Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the novel (my review here) under the same title is a little better know, but until I read Highsmith’s book, I accepted without question that both were excellent. I have also watched the film (last night as it happens) and except for somewhat rushed fairground and rather pat denouement, it holds up. Hitchcock had, however, taken the novel as his source material and altered the storyline, for better or worse.
I suggest that Highsmith’s intentions for the novel far outweigh her abilities in Strangers On A Train, and she would have been well-served by a good and sympathetic editor. That editor might well have suggested that her story should be restricted to the novella form or at least published as a short novel. (The novella is more a Continental than an English-language preference, however, so perhaps that never occurred to anyone.) In my view it would have benefited from judicious pruning without losing anything but gaining much
The ‘plot’ of both the novel and the film is intriguing: Charles Bruno, the rich, spoiled, alcoholic, young and obviously loopy scion of a wealthy Connecticut family and Guy Haines, an up-and-coming ‘genius’ architect, meet by chance on a train to the American south-west and the loopy lad very soon confesses that he hates his father would like to kill his father.
The architect had already informed him that his estranged wife, now pregnant by another man, is being tricky, blowing hot and cold, about agreeing to the divorce he wants and needs so he can marry the now ‘woman in his life’. He is on his way to his hometown in Texas to try to sort it out.
Loopy young alky then outlines a mad idea – one of many he has – of ‘swapping murders’ so that neither death can be attributed to the the chap who benefits from it. This notion is politely dismissed by the architect who then thinks no more about it. Unfortunately, almost on a whim, young man goes ahead anyway, tracks down the wayward wife in Texas, strangles her and returns to the East Coast.
The architect, when informed of his wife’s murder, suspects the young rich kid is chap wot done it, but, worse, the little tinker then insists Guy sticks to his side of the agreement to murder his dad, even when the architect tells him there is no ‘such agreement’.
From there on in Highsmith’s story becomes increasingly silly: the young alky bombards the architect with letters and threats, stalks him, sends him detailed plans of how to do the murder along with a Luger, and it all gets so out-of-hand that Guy persuades himself that if he does kill the old man, the young alky will finally leave him in peace. So he does murder the father.
It would be fruitless and dull to carry on outline ‘wot happens’, but little by little Guy, the architect goes ever more to pieces and loopy young alky behaves loopier and loopier. Highsmith sets herself the task of getting the reader to swallow it all, and perhaps a more experienced writer might have carried it off. Highsmith doesn’t.
Long, long stretches of ‘psychological’ inner life descriptions, of both Guy Haines and Charles Bruno, become tedious through repetition, pseudo insight and do not convince. Highsmith, like many inexperienced (and often bad) writers is also addicted to simile, too many of which are forced and do not work. Once in a blue moon a telling and simile works well, but otherwise they should be left alone. Highsmith lards her prose with them.
She also, and this is a pet hate of mine, too easily resorts to adverbs, which – again this is my view and others might disagree - are cheapo, easy, lazy and convenient short cuts and can always be discarded. A few shocking examples from the novel: ‘Bruno waited boredly smiling’, ‘the long dusk was sliding steeply into night’ and ‘looking up admiringly’ - plain awful.
There are other examples of cack-handed writing: he ‘wet his lips with a shaky tongue’ - what, in the eyes of any god, is a ‘shaky tongue’? Each to her or his own, of course, but . . .
The novel is also badly paced: the initial scene-setting on train goes on far too long, early scenes in Mexico are simply redundant and although, at a very generous pinch, we might accept that Guy felt increasingly trapped, an intelligent man – a bright and gifted architect, say –would know full well that hiring a half-decent lawyer and providing a complete and honest account of his encounter with Charles and Miriam’s subsequent murder would very soon have get him off the hook and solve his crisis. As it is . . .
Then there’s Guy’s unrealistically saintly fianceé, Anne, who might be expected to wonder sooner or later what the bloody hell was going on with her erratic boyfriend – ‘fights in bars’, scars, evasions, quite obvious extreme nervousness, receiving anonymous letters slagging him and hinting at murder, his far-fetched explanations – did the young woman at no point think enough is enough? Apparently not, and even more bizarrely she keeps in touch and socialises with Charles, on obviously alcoholic nutter.
Ironically, the final quarter of the novel, except for the ridiculous and unconvincing meeting with the father of Miriam’s child and her unwilling husband-to-be and the deus ex machina of New York PI who had been looking into the murder of the loopy alky’s father and turns up 1,700 miles away in Houston to overhear Guy’s confession, is more engaging and interesting.
Apart from that, nice try, Patricia pet, but certainly no cigar.
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