For one thing, Brat - odd as he is - has a conscience, and so in this case a lot of the tension in the novel arises from his own discomfort with the fraud he’s perpetrating: My book club voted for du Maurier, but I was too tempted by Brat Farrar not to order it as well.Īside from the structural similarity of one man impersonating another, though, the two novels could hardly be more different, and of the two, much as I admired and enjoyed Highsmith’s deadpan sociopathy, it’s Brat Farrar that plays more to my personal tastes. Ripley meets Flambards.” I’m reading it now, in fact, because it was one of two titles I came up with as follow-ups to my book club’s reading of Ripley: I went scouting for other books connected to it in some way (which is part of our selection process), and I discovered that there were two other classic suspense titles from around the same time featuring imposters and identity theft: Brat Farrar and Daphne du Maurier’s The Scapegoat. If I were writing one of those annoying sales blurbs for Brat Farrar, I’d describe it as “ The Talented Mr. And indeed all Brat Farrar has in common with it is Tey’s refreshing prose and keen eye for character. Mind you, in some respects The Daughter of Time is sui generis. I’ve been rereading The Daughter of Time for decades, so it’s odd that until now I had never read another novel by Josephine Tey.
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