Divided on if I think the adaptation is better. ( )

No matter how old either the book or the movie, I hadn't seen either and had only just heard of them because they were the inspiration for so many other stories!

This one is scary. It's too easy to see how such a strange chance encounter can tailspin your life! Who knew one slight meeting would have such dire consequences. I could picture in my head - play it all out - and how easily this could be me or you...meeting someone by complete chance on a bus or cafe....and set a chain of events going that you had no intention of setting off.

How often is that chance encounter with someone who is so entirely crazy? Hopefully none of us will ever know!
A great book! ( )

Classic Highsmith, with her distinctive spare style and dodgy characters. I can see why this is considered to be a classic, but it felt quite dated in both style and subject. The premise is fascinating, two strangers meet on a train and agree to commit murder. Or, one man agrees, and one man doesn't, and the game of cat and mouse that follow is a story of high tension and psychological manipulation.

Parts of the book were very good. Parts were incredibly slow. The relationships between the characters felt very superficial The main character, Guy, is an architect. I used to be an architect, and Highsmith really got this wrong. His profession doesn't have anything to do with the story, but it was distracting to read through the scenes where he's working and have to overlook the errors.

I'm not sure I would recommend this book to anyone who wasn't already familiar with (and liked) Highsmith's books, because it isn't all that readable by today's standards. It feels surreal in some places. But she does pull off some good tension, and I think the way Guy crumbles with guilt and paranoia after the murder is dead on. Still, some of the things he does feel stupid.

Overall, I'm glad I read this classic crime novel, but I wouldn't read it again. ( )

I was very excited to read Patricia Highsmith's first novel, Strangers on a Train. Everyone thinks of the Hitchcock film that this book was adapted into, which I have not seen. This book started off great, it was great until the end. The ending was not what I wanted to see happen, it was quite anticlimactic. So much so that I already forgot what happened... ( )

I thought this was going to be better, more suspenseful. I didn't care for the characters.