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

emotional hopeful slow-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

 This book was amazing. I definitely recommend it to any of my wlw friends. This review is meant to serve as more as a discussion than a review, so there may be spoilers in the following paragraph. I’ll go ahead and put the spoiler marking for the entire thing just in case.

edit: WARNING!! THE SPOILER FEATURE IS NOT WORKING FOR THE TEXT BELOW AND BIG SPOILERS ARE MENTIONED!! ALL TEXT BELOW THIS IS A SPOILER!!

I have so many thoughts on this book. First I want to say that, in my opinion, the dialogue in this book definitely undermines the relationship between Therese and Carol. I know that it was written from a point of view where the reader could only know Therese’s thoughts. Still, it would have been nice to know what Carol was thinking, at least sometimes. I felt that the relationship, up until Waterloo was a little lopsided and that Therese felt more strongly towards Carol. This could have been the case, Carol was her first love, the first person who made her realize her sexuality. This would make Therese have a stronger connection to Carol? Even then it almost seemed like Carol was not interested at all in Therese. Now that I think about it she was probably just more lowkey about it. 
 I recently saw something about love. “I love too much, I will never be loved back,” someone on the internet said. “Or maybe you love too little, true love does not expect anything to be reciprocated,” replied their therapist. I’ve never been in love, and moments where I felt like I might’ve been in love felt like the first quote. What I realized after reading that post was that my “love” (I can say for certain) was coming from a place of insecurity. I only bring this up because I feel like The Price Of Salt perfectly illustrates this “true love” between Therese and Carol. As I said in the first paragraph, the relationship felt lopsided. Wether it actually was or not is complicated? However, if it really was as lopsided as the novel suggests, then this is the prefect embodiment of living without expecting anything back. Therese wrote the letter and did not expect anything back. She spent a good chunk of the book not knowing if Carol didn’t feel the same thing back towards her. The thing that distinguishes her feelings towards Carol and what I felt in my past relationship was the fact that she did not care if Carol felt the same way back. She wanted to be with Carol and talk to her and chat with her all while not knowing exactly. I also think it’s perfectly fine and normal for little moments of “insecurity” to slip in. It is 100% necessary and healthy for it to happen. We are human and there is nothing wrong with it at all unless it is the only place where our love is coming from. This perfectly valid insecurity pops up in Therese in moments like when Carol asked her indifferently to go on a trip with her. I dont like the word insecurity for this feelings either. It has such a negative connotation.
 I found Therese incredibly relatable. First off she hates capitalism and consumerism. Secondly, “She hated cleaning up after making something,” (chapter 7). She also catches herself comparing her relationship with someone to another person’s relationship with that someone (like her brunch with Abby), which I find myself doing too. While working on the model for her job at the Black Cat, the book says “It might’ve been the least important matter in the whole production, but she had sat up until late last night, enthusiastically working on her model” (chapter 10). When I get to working on something, if I’m really passionate about it, then that’s all I think about and I have trouble putting it down. When Carol asks her to go on the trip, she has some anxiety about how genuine and truthful people were being with how they felt. Later in the same chapter (11), she listens to a song and relates the lyrics to her feelings to Carol. Later in Chapter 11, Therese fills Carol in on Ms. Robichek. It’s mentioned that she answers with a “absolute honestly that always depressed her afterward”. I interpreted this as she is scared she’s talked too much and she’s over thought the conversation. Lastly, when she talks to Danny about Carol and he responds without any hesitation that she loves another woman the text reads “Therese was amazed that he could say the words without any surprise, without any attitude at all,”. Sometimes when I mention something about another girl to a friend or family member and they don’t even flinch to respond it makes me feel very loved. It’s really the fact that they aren’t weird about it or treat it differently than if I was talking about a boy. I always catch it and it always amazes me, just like it did for Therese. I’m not sure why though. All of these things are just moments that I highlighted where I felt like I really saw myself in her. 
 I’ll wrap it up finally. To finish I wanted to appreciate the happy ending that our lovely lesbian couple got to have. In chapter 13 it says “Then the realization that so much had happened after that meeting made her incredibly lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and a woman to find each other, to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol...”. I love this quote. It captures how special finding love as an LGBTQ+ member feels. I cant wait until I can have this feeling for myself when I meet my future wife. 
 I really hope I didn’t contradict myself too much, especially in the second paragraph. I hope it’s made sense to someone out there. I kind of just word vomited for an hour so I’m going to blame that if I said anything stupid. And the fact that it is now 2:20AM.

On a less serious note, Debussy made me laugh really hard. A wind like da bussy. Looks like someone had a little toot😏


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