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Book Review: Carol by Patricia Highsmith

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Carol BloomsburyAbout the Book

Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter.  Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love.  Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn’t love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter.  As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol’s world, she soon realises how much they both stand to lose…

Format: Paperback (312 pp.)           Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2015 [1952]                     Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Carol on Goodreads

My Review

Carol was first published under the pseudonym Clare Morgan in 1952 with the title The Price of Salt. In the book’s afterword, Patricia Highsmith, writing in 1989, explains the story’s real life inspiration: a woman wearing a fur coat she glimpsed whilst working in the toy section of a New York department store shortly before Christmas in 1948.  She writes: ‘Perhaps I noticed her because she was alone, or because a mink coat was a rarity, and because she was blondish and seemed to give off light.’   Highsmith recounts how she was left feeling ‘odd and swimmy in the head, near to fainting, yet at the same time uplifted, as if I had seen a vision.’

From the germ of this idea was born The Price of Salt, published under a pseudonym because by that time Strangers on a Train had been published to great success and Highsmith was now considered a ‘suspense’ writer.  Her publishers wanted more of the same and The Price of Salt was anything but.  As it happens, The Price of Salt did turn out to be a commercial success, selling nearly one million copies when it was published in paperback in 1953.  And so the story of Carol…

Raised in a children’s home following a difficult upbringing, Therese has ambitions to be a stage designer.  Finding it hard to obtain openings in that profession, she reluctantly takes a job in a department store for the Christmas period.  It makes her feel trapped and she fears a future like some of the worn out, drab women she sees around her:   ‘…She knew it was the hopelessness that terrified her…the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and doing the things that person would do.’  Therese’s disillusion with her job is equalled by her dissatisfaction with her relationship with her boyfriend, Richard.    She finds she cannot return Richard’s love or relish the future together for which he hopes so fervently.  ‘She was cold, and felt rather miserable in general.  It was the half dangling, half cemented relationship with Richard, she knew.  They saw more and more of each other without growing closer.’

Therese’s first glimpse of Carol in the department store is life-changing; it awakens an overwhelming but quite unexpected attraction to this cool, stylish, beautiful woman.  When Therese initiates contact, it becomes apparent that the attraction is mutual and the two embark on a relationship that will become all-consuming and have consequences for them both.  For Therese, the relationship with Carol brings a sense of freedom and adventure.  As time goes on, it also seems to bring about a new maturity in Therese.  For Carol, a woman going through a divorce and custody battle, the relationship means agonising choices.  For them both, it means the opprobrium of society.  ‘In the eyes of the world it’s an abomination.’

It is difficult now for most of us to imagine the prejudice two women in such a relationship faced.   However, as Highsmith reminds us in the afterword, those were the days  when ‘gay bars were a dark door somewhere in Manhattan, where people wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway a station before or after the convenient one, lest they be suspected of being homosexual.’

The story is told from the point of view of Therese so Carol always remains something of an enigma, slightly distant and often unreadable.  So, like Therese, the reader, is left to try to interpret the extent of Carol’s feelings for Therese from her actions and her often opaque comments and unexplained moods.  Therese wonders, ‘Was life, were human relationships always like this… Never solid ground underfoot’. At times, it feels as if Carol is afraid of the intensity of Therese’s feelings for her, of what loving her might mean for Therese.  Unspoken thoughts, not being able to say the right words are something of a theme of the book.  ‘She [Therese] did not want to talk.  Yet she felt there were thousands of words choking her throat.’

In her foreword to my edition, the Val McDermid writes: ‘Some books change lives.  This is one of them.’  She describes how Carol, the story of a lesbian relationship, didn’t so much fill a niche as ‘a gaping void’.  It may well have been groundbreaking at the time but, in the end, Carol is simply the tender, emotional, passionate story of two people exploring the attraction they feel for each other.   I found it a wonderful book and the ending simply beautiful.

Carol is part of my TBR Pile Challenge and one of the books on my Classics Club list.  It also forms part of my From Page to Screen reading project.  I will be posting my thoughts on the comparison between the book and the film (starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) in due course.

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In three words: Passionate, stylish, intimate

Patricia HighsmithAbout the Author

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921.  Her parents moved to New York when she was six, and she attended Julia Richmond high School and Barnard College.  In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer.  Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951.   The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America and introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, who was to appear in many of her later crime novels.

Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, on 4 February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously a month later.

Website ǀ  Goodreads

The Classics Club TBR Challenge 2018From Page to Screen

From Page to Screen: Murder on the Orient Express

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About the Book: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Without a shred of doubt, one of his fellow passengers is the murderer. Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again.

Read my review of the book here.

Kenneth BranaghAbout the Film: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Murder on the Orient Express is directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh from a screenplay by Michael Green based on Agatha Christie’s novel. A star-studded cast includes Sir Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, Johnny Depp as Ratchett, Michelle Pfeiffer as Mrs Hubbard along with Penelope Cruz, Dame Judi Dench, Daisy Ridley, Sir Derek Jacob and others.

More information about the film can be found here.

Book v Film (Spoiler free)

Firstly, I’m going to confess that I’m a fan of the 1974 film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot.  Alongside Finney are a succession of Hollywood big names such as Lauren Bacall and Richard Widmark and some of the cream of British film and theatre, including Sir John Gielgud, Michael York, Vanessa Redgrave and Sean Connery.

However, I’m also a great admirer of Sir Kenneth Branagh’s work, notably his wonderful version of Henry V. In fact, I’m not sure anyone other than him would have tempted me to consider seeing a new version of Murder on the Orient Express.   I was lucky enough to view the film at my local independent cinema, Reading Film Theatre. Its President is none other than Sir Kenneth Branagh. He was brought up in Reading and was a member of the RFT for a time. Those of us attending the film got a bonus in the form of a specially recorded video message from Sir Kenneth about the film and his connections with the RFT. He mentioned that one of the films he remembered seeing there was Dog Day Afternoon, directed by….yes, Sidney Lumet.

The script of this latest version follows fairly closely the plot of the book, although an opening scene has been added which I thought largely superfluous.   Branagh’s Poirot has the keen observational and deductive skills of Agatha Christie’s literary creation but is a tad more energetic. As director, Branagh chooses not to confine the action to inside the stranded train, as in the earlier film version and in the original book.

The passengers on the train represent the same varied collection of characters as in the book, although some character names have been changed and there is a little more diversity in the casting than in the earlier film version. With a large cast of characters, it’s probably impossible to avoid some of them having very little screen time and this was the case here. For instance, poor Olivia Colman got only a few lines and she had to say most of those in German! In terms of performances, Branagh’s stands out. The screenplay added some back story to the character of Hercule Poirot and a little wry humour but retained the essence of the fussy, exacting man of Agatha Christie’s books. Branagh was good at tempering Poirot’s, at times, pompous belief in his own abilities with hints of inner doubt and questioning of the nature of justice. I also really liked Sir Derek Jacobi’s sympathetic portrayal of Ratchett’s valet, Masterman, but then I’m a fan of Sir Derek and he represents that class of actor who can make something powerful on the screen out of very little on the page.

As you might expect from an experienced director like Branagh, the film is well shot, there are expertly handled crowd scenes and some luscious scenery as the train proceeds on its journey. The closing lines attempt to be a clever joke but to anyone familiar with another very famous Agatha Christie mystery come across merely as a goof.

The Verdict

The film respects the book’s ingenious plot and the inventiveness of the solution to the murder of Ratchett.   Although I enjoyed the film, as in so many cases before, I believe the book wins out. However, I’m sure people who have never read the book or are too young to have seen the earlier film version will probably enjoy it. Personally, I’d recommend reading the book and then watching the 1974 film version just to wallow in the glamourous setting, the starry cast and the glorious music of Richard Rodney Bennett.

What do you think? Have you read the book or seen the film?