Product Description

Therese first glimpses Carol in the New York department store where she is working as a sales assistant. Carol is choosing a present for her daughter; she looks preoccupied, exuding an aura of elegance as perfect as a secret. Standing there at the counter, Therese suddenly feels wholly innocent - wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese was nineteen, and loved by a young man she cared about, but could not desire. Carol was a sophisticated married woman. Now Therese seemed to have no other purpose to her life other than their meeting First published under a pseudonym in 1952, Carol is a love story told with compelling wit and eroticism, and consummate tenderness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37343 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'A document of persecuted love ... perfect' Independent 'About the pursuit of love, and true happiness ... It has characters who laugh, and who laugh without scorn or illusion ... very recognisably Highsmith, as full of tremor and of threat and of her peculiar genius for anxiety' Sunday Times 'Gently exploratory, genuinely moving' Mail on Sunday 'An original, honest novel, a remarkable imaginative achievement by any standard ... compelling' Financial Times

Graham Greene, novelist
'Highsmith is a novelist whose books one can re-read many times. There are few of whom one can say that'

Financial Times
'An original, honest novel, a remarkable imaginative achievement by any standard ... compelling'

Customer Reviews

Refreshing, even 50 years later!
For those familiar with Highsmith's more renowned tales of murder and intrigue, this has a refreshingly different theme, quite starkly autobiographical, and rather brave for the times it was written in. This was only her second novel, but already her distinctive style was already established - a crisp, compelling and no-nonsense style of writing that sets it apart.

Young Therese meets Carol, a customer at the doll department in Frankenbergs where she works. This fleeting encounter is described by Therese as a vision, a sudden realisation of one's desires in another. In this story, she and Carol meet, become friends and later on, become lovers during a road trip they take together right across America.

It is a very sensitively written portrayal of love, at a time when such relationships were considered degenerate and as Highsmith said herself, most fiction pertaining to the subject ended in dissolution and tragedy. Here was a refreshing outlook to a previously controversial subject, and her treatment of it was bold and wonderfully low-key, tasteful and un-sensationalist. For that reason, I think it deserves the 5 stars. I also like the depiction of personal revelations of love, which do not consider the usual, hackneyed questions of "Is this perverse?" but then later on, goes on to challenge the perceptions of the world and so-called respectable society.

Passionate, haunting and - surprisingly - optimistic
A wonderful book. Knowing (but not liking all that much) some of Highsmith's other work I had certain reservations about this book. Or at least expected there to be a dead body or two (perhaps as part of yet another mournful ending for lesbians as was so common when the book was first published in the fifties). And there are certain elements that give it away as a Highsmith - particularly the intense atmosphere she creates. But ultimately this is a book about passion, about love and about working out who is "right" for you. It's lesbian treasure.

One of the best books I've ever read.
I don't think I've ever read a book that was so probing into sexuality and so upfront about a lesbian relationship without being explicit. A truly enjoyable novel whatever your sexuality.