A review by playertwo0o
The Price of Salt, or Carol by Patricia Highsmith

4.25

4.25/5 - a bittersweet novel about 2 sapphics on a roadtrip in the 50s. 

The meeting of Therese and Carol in the department store encapsulates the random encounters of romantic attraction; it really was the cliche of meeting eyes for the first time and being obsessed with each other. I admire Therese’s boldness of sending the Christmas Card and knowing what may happen afterwards (which did). 

At times during the relationship of Carol and Therese I did question if Carol was taking advantage of Therese because Carol has been in a sapphic relationship before, Therese was clearly head over heels over Carol and would do anything she asked (such as grabbing the gun and giving it to her), Therese is only 19 and inexperienced in life, and Carol was rather unpleasant at times to her. Carol’s mood changes are very abrupt like when they were taking the shower together all happily and sappily until Carol nearly slips and has a right go at Therese. But the end convinced me that Carol didn’t only want Therese to come with her on the road trip was because her ego benefited from the obsessive attention and infatuation - it must’ve meant so much for Carol to not fight for Rindy and have custody over her because those terms meant she couldn’t see Therese again and she couldn’t bear that.

I liked the style of writing. It was simple in structure yet conveyed all the emotion it wanted. Sometimes with older books (compared to modern ones now, not saying 1950s is old), the author convolutes the sentences with dart thrown commas until an entire sentence covers half a page.