Read – Page 1248 – What Cathy Read Next…

MyWeekinBooks

New arrivals

The Secrets Between Us by Laura Madeleine (ebook)

High in the mountains in the South of France, eighteen-year-old Ceci Corvin is trying hard to carry on as normal. But in 1943, there is no such thing as normal; especially not for a young woman in love with the wrong person. Scandal, it would seem, can be more dangerous than war.

Fifty years later, Annie is looking for her long-lost grandmother. Armed with nothing more than a sheaf of papers, she travels from England to Paris in pursuit of the truth. But as she traces her grandmother’s story, Annie uncovers something she wasn’t expecting, something that changes everything she knew about her family – and everything she thought she knew about herself…

The Secret Life of Mrs London by Rebecca Rosenberg (review)

San Francisco, 1915. As America teeters on the brink of world war, Charmian and her husband, famed novelist Jack London, wrestle with genius and desire, politics and marital competitiveness. Charmian longs to be viewed as an equal partner who put her own career on hold to support her husband, but Jack doesn’t see it that way…until Charmian is pulled from the audience during a magic show by escape artist Harry Houdini, a man enmeshed in his own complicated marriage. Suddenly, charmed by the attention Houdini pays her and entranced by his sexual magnetism, Charmian’s eyes open to a world of possibilities that could be her escape.

As Charmian grapples with her urge to explore the forbidden, Jack’s increasingly reckless behavior threatens her dedication. Now torn between two of history’s most mysterious and charismatic figures, she must find the courage to forge her own path, even as she fears the loss of everything she holds dear.

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark (paperback, giveaway prize)

In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, “Remember you must die.” Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.

Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall (ARC, courtesy of Century) – draft cover shown

Mike knows that most of us travel through the world as one half of a whole, desperately searching for that missing person to make us complete. But he and Verity are different. They have found each other and nothing and no one will tear them apart. It doesn’t matter that Verity is marrying another man. You see, Verity and Mike play a game together, a secret game they call ‘the crave’, the aim being to demonstrate what they both know: that Verity needs Mike, and only Mike. Verity’s upcoming marriage is the biggest game she and Mike have ever played. And it’s for the highest stakes. Except this time in order for Mike and Verity to be together someone has to die…

Fred’s Funeral by Sandy Day (ebook, review copy courtesy of the author)

Fred Sadler has just died of old age. It’s 1986, seventy years after he marched off to WWI, and the ghost of Fred Sadler hovers near the ceiling of the nursing home. To Fred’s dismay, the arrangement of his funeral falls to his prudish sister-in-law, Viola. As she dominates the remembrance of Fred, he agonizes over his inability to set the record straight.

Was old Uncle Fred really suffering from shell shock? Why was he locked up most of his life in the Whitby Hospital for the Insane? Could his family not have done more for him?

Fred’s memories of his life as a child, his family’s hotel, the War, and the mental hospital, clash with Viola’s version of events as the family gathers on a rainy October night to pay their respects.

Getting Home by Wolfe Butler (ebook, review copy courtesy of the author)

Dealing with a past he cannot remember, a future he is not sure he wants and questioning everything from his sanity to his sexuality, Tom Jacobs feels ever more certain that the only solution is to end it all. A high level career, a perfect marriage, a power family – from the outside Tom seems to have everything he could want. Yet, try as he will, he cannot seem to escape a constant need to run. Plagued with nightmares and an ever increasing need to control his life with alcohol, Tom is spinning out of control. What begins as a mission to end it all becomes a twenty year journey to the life he was meant to live. With unexpected turns, heartbreaking revelations and unlikely allies Tom is finally on the road that leads to Getting Home.

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Under an Amber Sky by Rose Alexander, a story of loss, love and starting over set in Montenegro.

Tuesday – I shared my Top Ten Books I Meant To Read in 2017, focussing on books I’ve received from authors that are still languishing in my review stack.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just finished reading, what I’m reading now and what I’ll be reading next. I also published my review of Shadows on the Grass by Misha M. Herwin about three generations of women from a Polish family.

Thursday – I took part in the blog tour for The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, Vol.1 by Collins Hemingway, an affectionate, witty reimagining of the romantic life of the famous author.

Friday – I published a list of books – some I’ve read, some I’ve only heard about – that I’d like to see on the longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction when it’s announced in February.

Saturday – I published my review of Carol by Patricia Highsmith. Not two but three birds with one stone because as well as being a book on my Classics Club list, it’s also part of my 2018 TBR Pile Challenge and my From Page to Screen reading project.

Challenge updates

Goodreads 2018 Reading Challenge – 7 out of 156 books read, 4 more than last week
Classics Club Challenge – 8 out of 50 books read, 1 more than last week
NetGalley/Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2018 (Silver) – 1 ARCs read and reviewed out of 25, 1 more than last week
From Page to Screen– 9 book/film comparisons out of 15 completed, same as last week
2018 TBR Pile Challenge – 2 out of 12 books read, 1 more than last week
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2018 – 4 books out of 50 read, 3 more than last week
When Are You Reading? Challenge 2018 – 2 out of 12 books read, 1 more than week
What’s In A Name Reading Challenge – 0 out of 6 books read
Buchan of the Month – 0 out of 12 books read

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

Blog Tour/Review & Q&A: Beautiful Star & Other Stories by Andrew Swanston
Review: Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block
Review: The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford
Review: Nucleus (Tom Wilde #2) by Rory Clements
Review: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Blog Tour/Extract: The Start of Something Wonderful by Jane Lambert
From Page to Screen: Carol

About 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

About 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 2018 From Page to Screen