The Price of Salt

Groundbreaking at the time, simply because it featured a happy ending between two women…what a concept! Seems like this should not have been a tall order, yet, in 1952, it was a revolutionary idea that a lesbian love story would not end with tragedy which was the recipe of the day if a writer dared to write about forbidden love. 

If you are addicted to push/pull in romance stories where the stakes are high but the characters are willing to jump higher, you may fall in love with this book. 

The novel was mesmerizing and lovingly translated into film. Hollywood… show more.

Follow this daisy chain of literary and movie connections: The Price of Salt, published in 1952, was adapted into the 2015 film Carol, but I discovered the novel after seeing the 1999 movie adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was based on another Patricia Highsmith book. I tore through the Ripley series, and I was hooked on Highsmith.

I read The Price of Salt fully aware of its tortured history: Highsmith used the pseudonym “Claire Morgan” and for nearly 40 years didn’t publicly acknowledge authorship; the novel fell out of print in the 1970s. Mark those… show more.

The Price of Salt (also titled Carol), Highsmith’s groundbreaking lesbian love story from 1952, is another work that brings to light lives hidden by the status-quo telling of history. Told from the hyperreal point of view of 19-year-old Therese, this love story is tender and intimate, even as it is threatened from all sides by a culture that punished lesbians with devastating consequences. Further, it is a story written without shame, and, remarkably, with a happy ending (rather than the tragic ending required at that time)—making it a radical work of resilience and resistance.