Is The Price of Salt Worth Reading?
Ada’s Score
Highsmith builds Carol's world with the same cool precision she brings to her thrillers — every glance loaded, every silence deliberate. What sets this apart is restraint: the love story between Therese and Carol unfolds through texture and atmosphere rather than declaration, and that discipline gives it real emotional weight. The prose is measured but quietly electric. Where the book succeeds most is in its refusal to punish its characters for loving each other — radical for 1952, and still affecting now. Best suited to those who value psychological interiority and slow-burning tension over plot momentum.
Deep Dive“Before there was permission to hope, Highsmith wrote this. Every stolen glance here changed what queer stories were allowed to be.”
A Love Story That Dared to Hope
There's a tenderness in Highsmith's prose here that caught me completely off guard — this is, after all, the woman who gave us Ripley, and yet she writes desire and longing with such aching delicacy that I found myself holding my breath through entire pages. What moves me most is that she refuses to punish her characters for loving each other, which in 1952 was nothing short of a radical act, and that defiance still hums underneath every scene like a live wire. I finished it feeling strangely restored, as if the book had quietly insisted that happiness, for people like Carol and Therese, was not only possible but deserved.
Ada Brief
AI reading intelligence“Before there was permission to hope, Highsmith wrote this. Every stolen glance here changed what queer stories were allowed to be.”
A Love Story That Dared to Hope
There's a tenderness in Highsmith's prose here that caught me completely off guard — this is, after all, the woman who gave us Ripley, and yet she writes desire and longing with such aching delicacy that I found myself holding my breath through entire pages. What moves me most is that she refuses to punish her characters for loving each other, which in 1952 was nothing short of a radical act, and that defiance still hums underneath every scene like a live wire. I finished it feeling strangely restored, as if the book had quietly insisted that happiness, for people like Carol and Therese, was not only possible but deserved.
Book Details
- Publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Published
- January 1, 2004
- Pages
- 288
- Language
- ENG
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Ada’s Score
3.98
Ada’s editorial score — not an aggregate of reader reviews.
Common Questions About The Price of Salt
- Is The Price of Salt worth reading?
- Before there was permission to hope, Highsmith wrote this. Every stolen glance here changed what queer stories were allowed to be. Ada rates it 4.0 out of 5.
- How many pages is The Price of Salt?
- The Price of Salt is 288 pages long — around 5–6 hours at an average reading pace.
