| The Price of Salt | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 19 reviews)
Sales Rank: 134358
Category: Book
Authors: Patricia Highsmith, W. W. Norton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0393325997
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780393325997
ASIN: 0393325997
Publication Date: February 23, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Good Novel, Strong Love Story October 6, 2008
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.
 The Price was Worth It June 14, 2008
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!
A love story that's surprising --- for how good it is March 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's Christmas, and money's tight, so Therese Belivet does what any unemployed 19-year-old stage designer might --- she takes a temp job in the toy department of a Manhattan department store. Her days define dreary. The aging sales clerks seem "stricken with an everlasting exhaustion and terror." As for her customers, they're also desperate, but for a doll, any doll.
Then Mrs. H.F. Aird walks in.
Calm gray eyes. Blonde. Pale, thin ankles. Suede high heels. Her voice was "like her coat, rich and supple, and somehow full of secrets."
Therese has a boyfriend, who "talked like any of the people one saw in Village bars, young people who were supposed to be writers or actors, and who usually did nothing." After ten months, they aren't growing closer. This isn't love.
But Mrs. H. F. Aird --- what is that attraction?
Therese sends a card that says nothing much. But just sending it is provocative. Carol Aird, 32 and unhappily married and a mother, responds. And so it begins...
Patricia Highsmith, known for thrillers that show how easily evil can masquerade as goodness, wrote "The Price of Salt" right after Strangers on a Train. She was short of cash, so she took a job in a department store. A cool beauty walked in. After she left, Highsmith felt "cool and swimmy" in her head; that night, she wrote an eight-page outline. Her publisher had been pressing her for another suspense novel, but she said that she didn't regard "Strangers on a Train" as suspense --- and she considered this new plot, she has written, "simply a novel with an interesting story."
That is so disingenuous. This was the late 1940s and early 1950s, and even in wicked New York, Highsmith notes, "those were the days when people wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway station before or after the convenient one, lest they be suspected of being homosexual." So to write a love story about two women --- could Highsmith have been completely surprised when Harper & Bros. rejected it?
The happy ending: A "specialty" press published "The Price of Salt" --- under the byline of "Claire Morgan" --- in paperback in 1952.
It sold a million copies.
It deserved to. In a swift 275 pages, Highsmith creates a world that's seems entirely plausible. First, there's the love story: the push-pull of the flirting, the heart-stopping looks, the thrill of a touch. Then there's the suspense aspect. Divorce wasn't no-fault anywhere in America in the early 1950s; it was a time of private detectives and blame. And so, when Carol and Therese take a trip, they're not alone --- Mr. Aird's private eye follows. This is not a romance without consequences.
And, of course, there is the sex.
But do not think for a second that this book has appeal only to women who love women --- or men who get off on lesbian sex.
There is, in fact, almost no sex in the novel. This is not a book about Tab A and Slot B, and then Tab A being banished.
And that is its power. The book is about two women coming to terms with forbidden love --- about wanting to be together and having trouble saying how much they want that, and being scared and having misunderstandings. It's got all the stuff of a love story between heterosexuals. Just with higher stakes. And an ending that's surprising...
"I never wrote another book like this," Highsmith said.
Well, you never read one like this.
Very Moving Work February 28, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very good book in many different respects, as the other reviewers have noted. For me, it contains one of the best, most well-timed, and well-placed "I love you" statements in all of recent literature.
A beautifully told love story March 31, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Therese works as a shopgirl in a large department store as it prepares fro the Christmas rush. But it's only a temporary job as she wants to become a set designer, with the help of contacts provided by her boyfriend Richard. She's content but life with Richard isn't quite what she's looking for. In fact, she's not sure what she needs until Carol, a handsome older woman, walks into her department to buy a doll for her daughter. Therese manages to strike up a conversation with Carol and soon, they begin to see quite a bit of each other. Their friendship changes while on a cross country trip and soon Therease and Carol must battle to keep their romance going despite the possible threat of Carol's husband and threats to keep her away from her daughter.
This is a thought-provoking novel about coming out and trying to maintain a relationship that runs askew of societal norms. Highsmith expertly tells the story from Therese's point of view, voicing her fears, opinions, thoughts so that as a reader, I felt as if I were taking part in the story. It's also good at giving the reader a glimpse into how homosexuality was treated during the 1950's. What I enjoyed most about this novel, though, is that the characters do not have the tragic ending common to gay/lesbian characters at the time; they have the possibility of continuing the relationship. A refreshing change to novels of the time.
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