The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Genre: Classic/Romance/Lesbian/Fiction/Mystery



I can't say more than this is a story about falling in love so unexpectedly that your heart wants to leap right out of your chest, that it burns deeply within you, and that even water can't spoil the fire.

Goodreads Synopsis:  
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.

It was brutal to read this book. It was as if I was seeing the world through Therese's eyes...Never knowing if Carol truly loved her until the very end. I felt myself wracked with emotions, from happiness to sadness; all the feelings that make up what it means to love. I feared at times, I would hate this book, but as I reached the end, I found that it's one of my most favorites. I only put it down once to sleep, then I returned to complete it as I awakened. I love it because it makes you feel what it means to love a person, truly and whole heartedly, even though at times you may not truly understand how deeply those feelings go. It reminds me that you can't run from what your heart wants, even if it hurts like hell. I recommend this book to anyone who fancies a story about falling in love.

Shame on anyone who thinks evil of this.