The Price of Salt

Patricia Highsmith

Mar 2011 · She Winked Press

About this ebook

 First Digital Edition; Grier Rating: A***

Therese is nineteen and working in a department store during the Christmas shopping season. She dates men, although not with real enthusiasm. One day a beautiful older woman comes over to her counter and buys a doll. As the purchase is a C.O.D. order, Therese makes a mental note of the customer’s address.  She is intrigued and drawn to the woman.  Although young, inexperienced and shy, she writes a note to the customer, Carol, and is elated and surprised when Carol invites her to meet.

Therese realizes she has strong feelings for Carol, but is unsure of what they represent. Carol, in the process of a bitter separation and divorce, is also quite lonely.  Soon the two women begin spending a great deal of time together.  Before long, they are madly and hopelessly in love. The path is not easy for them, however. Carol also has a child and a very suspicious husband--dangerous ground for the lovers.  When the women leave New York and travel west together, they discover the choices they’ve made to be together will have lasting effects on both their lives.

Considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel to break the pulp publishing industry-enforced pattern of tragic consequences for its lesbian heroines, The Price of Salt was written by Patricia Highsmith (under the pseudonym, Claire Morgan) – the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

As one reviewer wrote in 1952, “Claire Morgan is completely natural. She has a story to tell and she tells it with an almost conversational ease. Her people are neither degenerate monsters nor fragile victims of the social order. They must—and do—pay a price for thinking, feeling and loving ‘differently,’ but they are courageous and true to themselves throughout.”

Ratings and reviews

If the world happened to go into a post apocalypse and I was forced to stay in a bunker, for who knows how long, I would definitely be bringing this book with me, I'm sure this would revive me after every read. Such a gorgeous book from start to finish!

When the film 'Carol' made its debut two years ago, I held off seeing it for nearly two months; not that I did not want to see the film, or was the type to shy away from a love story between women, but more because I wanted to first be in a certain frame of mind. This is a quirk of mine regarding the absorption of great art. I had sensed the film fit that category (certainly it was not in the same genre as The Amazing Spider-Man) and wanted to empty my mind of expectations and preconceptions. I have watched the film six times, and plan to see it many more over what remains of the breadth of my lifespan. And, as all great films are apt to do, when they are based on a novel or play, I eventually will seek out the original material for a deeper understanding of characters, situations, and how these thing translate to the screen. This novel has confirmed what I suspected; the late Patricia Highsmith was a first rate artist...one who used words as tools with which to carve stories from typeface. The care this book takes with a most difficult subject is nothing less than stunning, far more so than the film. Therese and Carol, drawn to each other in a way neither can deny, each casting a circumspect eye over their shoulders as threats to their world crawl insidiously beneath them, reminders that their time together is short. The world they left was evil. What they have together transcends all of it. I would heartily recommend this work to any reader as a 'must have' in their collection. Thank you for this space CD Sutton II

Good book. Real slowburn, full of emotion. Makes you feel like you're experiencing everything along with the characters. Charmingly old, as one could expect of a 70+ year old book.