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The Price of Salt
by Patricia Highsmith
| List Price: |
$16.95 |
Unavailable for
purchase at this time |
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Paperback
Publisher: Naiad Pr
Now recognized as a masterwork, the scandalous novel that anticipated Nabokov's Lolita. "I have long had a theory that Nabokov knew The Price of Salt and modeled the climactic cross-country car chase in Lolita on Therese and Carol's frenzied bid for freedom," writes Terry Castle in The New Republic about this novel, arguably Patricia Highsmith's finest, first published in 1952 under the pseudonym Clare Morgan. Soon to be a new film, The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover. With this reissue, The Price of Salt may finally be recognized as a major twentieth-century American novel.
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| Everything you could want from a novel |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Carol/ The Price of Salt was originally published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1952, before this reviewer was born, but it feels far more relevant than many novels I have read, lesbian or straight, because Patricia Highsmith is the kind of writer with the kind of almost creepy sense of detail that makes you feel like you are present and experiencing everything the protagonist is experiencing, from the sore feet from working too long hours at the department store to the moment she falls in love with a customer.
"Her mouth was as wise as eyes, Therese thought, and her voice was like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets."
Therese is poor and young, dating a young man, and Carol is rich, beautiful, and ... married, with a young child and a husband who is very possesive, vindictive and cruel.
The novel turns into a love story, a thriller, and also into a young woman's journey into independence and her quest to do what she is meant to do; be who she is meant to be; love the woman she cannot stop loving, regardless of social norms, or differences in ages, and regardless of differences in social background, and despite all kinds of prejudice and threats.
The Price of Salt, or Carol, is one of my absolute favourite novels, all genres, all times, and also my favourite Patricia Highsmith novel.
L. Holm author
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| Best book I've ever read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I read this book for the first time a year ago, not knowing beforehand that it was written in the early 1950s. The subject matter is very daring and intense. I'm not even referring to the lesbian part; I'm talking about the age gap. Also (spoiler, sorta), over 50 years later, there is still an issue with single women losing their children in divorce because of their sexuality (end spoiler.)
The Price of Salt is beautifully written, classy, unique and timeless in many regards. I love reading it. I frequently wish that Patricia Highsmith had produced more books like this one, but I guess why do that if you got it right the first go round?
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| Awsome Book Ever!!!! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Once I started reading it, I cannot resist put down the book. Until I finished reading the book and felt relieve, because Therese finally able to live with Carol as what she wished the first time she met her at the Department Store. I recommend this book to whoever likes lesbian story.
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| Good Novel, Strong Love Story |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Unlike Terry Castle of "The New Republic", I'm not convinced that Nabokov used Carol and Therese's trip in "The Price of Salt" as a template for the extended "vacation" that Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze took in "Lolita". If he did, he expanded it in richness and depth about a thousand-fold. "The Price of Salt", while no "Lolita", is an interesting (and unusual) work in its own right. Carol and Therese meet in the toy section of the department store where the latter works; they embark on a friendship, and fall in love. Carol happens to be married (separated, to be exact). She also happens to have a young daughter. (Even today, one should be able to sense certain ethical issues rearing their ugly heads. Having said that, noone behaves as badly as Harge, Carol's narcissistic, winner-take-all husband.) It takes the two women quite awhile to sleep together, so those in search of quick, cheap thrills will undoubtably be disappointed. And when they finally do, Highsmith's prose drifts into the nebulous vagaries of poetry, reminding us that this was, indeed, written in the 1950's. The novel is, first and foremost, a love story. It is not in any way, shape, or form, a sex manual.
While "The Price of Salt" didn't seize and possess me the way Jane Rule's "Desert of the Heart" did--which isn't all bad--I felt it gradually trickle into the parched nooks and crannies of my aging yet inquisitive mind. (And what lesbian, repressed or not, could turn these strange, mystifying pages without wanting, at least a little, to take Therese's place one night in one of those not-so-anonymous hotel rooms?)
The ending, I have to say, is rather abrupt. It left me with the exasperating "That's it!?" sensation--you know the feeling. All and all, though, "The Price of Salt" is a solid novel featuring a strong love story, made even more compelling because of the taboo nature of homosexuality at the time.
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| The Price was Worth It |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I love Patricia Highsmith with her sadistic view of human nature. Her description of the character's boyfriend (his forehead reminding her of a whale and his hands looking like paws) was hilarious. She is an excellent writer who uses similes and metaphors well. Not to mention the unconventional story for that day and time!
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