Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of The Price of Salt, or Carol by Patricia Highsmith

The Price of Salt, or Carol by Patricia Highsmith

The Price of Salt, or Carol

by Patricia Highsmith
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 1, 1952, 304 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2015, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Patricia Highsmith's story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century.

First published in 1952 and touted as "the novel of a love that society forbids," the book soon became a cult classic.

Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life, The Price of Salt (or Carol) tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany―the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. The Price of Salt is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

If lesbian pulp fiction was the Trojan horse providing cover for these women to read about themselves through stories ostensibly meant for men, then Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt (1952) was the Trojan horse inside the Trojan horse providing a disguise for a genuine love story between two women. It is widely regarded as the first novel about queer women to feature a "happy" ending. Which is not to say the story is without tragedy. It centers around a 19-year-old woman named Therese Belivet who is working at a New York City department store to make extra money over the holidays. She falls spontaneously and devastatingly in love with an older woman, Carol Aird, who stops in the store to purchase a doll for her daughter. Therese seems to be experiencing same-sex attraction for the first time, but there is surprisingly little fanfare around the question of sexuality (screenwriter for the film adaptation Phyllis Nagy has also commented on this aspect, declaring the premise of the novel to be "two central figures not giving a rat's ass about sexual identity")...continued

Full Review (1064 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).

Media Reviews

The New Yorker
Viscerally romantic.

The Independent (UK)
A document of persecuted love―perfect.

The Sunday Times (UK)
About the pursuit of love, and true happiness…It has characters who laugh, and who laugh without scorn or illusion…very recognizably Highsmith, full of tremor and of threat and of her peculiar genius for anxiety.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



The Publication History of The Price of Salt, or Carol

Black-and-white photograph of Patricia Highsmith, smoking a cigarette and smiling When Patricia Highsmith finished The Price of Salt in 1951, the manuscript was rejected by her publisher, Harper Bros., who had just put out her first hit novel Strangers on a Train. She sent the manuscript on to Coward-McCann (then an imprint of G.P. Putnam's Sons) using a pseudonym, Claire Morgan, and it was accepted for publication. (Coward-McCann went on to publish one of the author's best-known works, The Talented Mr. Ripley, in 1955.) The Price of Salt was not printed with Highsmith's real name on the cover until 1990.

After a single printing by Coward-McCann, the book was published in paperback by Bantam in 1953 with a cover that marketed it as a work of pulp fiction. Lesbian pulp fiction was an entire subgenre at the ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Price of Salt, or Carol, try these:

  • We Do What We Do in the Dark jacket

    We Do What We Do in the Dark

    by Michelle Hart

    Published 2023

    About this book

    A novel about a young woman's life-altering affair with a much older, married woman.

  • Fortune Favors the Dead jacket

    Fortune Favors the Dead

    by Stephen Spotswood

    Published 2021

    About this book

    A wildly charming and fast-paced mystery written with all the panache of the hardboiled classics, Fortune Favors the Dead introduces Pentecost and Parker, an audacious new detective duo for the ages.

We have 4 read-alikes for The Price of Salt, or Carol, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Wager
    by David Grann
    From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    From the bestselling author of I Was Anastasia comes a historical mystery inspired by 18th-century midwife Martha Ballard, who investigates a shocking murder.
  • Book Jacket
    The Bluest Eye
    by Toni Morrison
    The story of a black girl in America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others. First published 1970; won the 1993 Nobel Prize.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

Who Said...

Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

D to T N

and be entered to win..