The
Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (a.k.a. Claire
Morgan)
The Price of Salt was published in 1952,
but under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. Only in 1984 did
Patricia Highsmith allow the book to appear under the name
Highsmith. The importance of The Price of Salt is
that it's considered to be the very first, or at least one of the
very few early lesbian pulp fiction novels to have an upbeat
ending.
"I was introduced to Therese and Carol, the
two protagonists in Highsmith's lesbian romance The Price of Salt,
my Sophomore year of college in a Gay and Lesbian Lit. Class. The
professor told the class she had picked the book because it was
well written and it presented an interesting twist to a gay love
story, no one dies or goes straight at the end (imagine that).
This alone is not necessarily compelling enough to get someone to
read Salt, after all, today's gay and lesbian love stories often
end in positive and fulfilled ways. But for Highsmith's Salt,
written in the 1950s, this was a stretch. 
The
reader will enjoy the subtleness of the prose and the in-depth
look at the confusion and chaos that can occur when two women come
together and realize their mutual attraction and then love for
each other. In addition, the novel is a dynamic look at 1950s
America as the characters adventure out of New York and off into
the Great American Wide Open. I encourage gay and straight readers
to venture forth with Therese and Carol. Salt allows a beautiful
look into the world of finding one's soul mate and falling in
love. Because, above all, Highsmith has written a love story, not
just a lesbian work of fiction." -- Anonymous Review
(Amazon.com)
The
Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game by
Patricia
Highsmith
Astonishingly
unappreciated in America in her lifetime, Patricia Highsmith has
suddenly become a hot writer, four years after her death. This has
been aided in no small part by the theatrical release of The
Talented Mr. Ripley, with its cast of attractive young people.
The success of the film has induced readers to try the book--not
uncommon for popular movie adaptations--and then to look for other
books by her as well. This excellent trilogy of the first three
(of five) adventures of the utterly amoral Ripley helps fill that
need.
In spite of being a bestselling writer in
Germany, France, Austria, and other European countries, and in
spite of the great fame accorded her first novel,
Strangers
on a Train, and the film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock,
Highsmith enjoyed no success in her native America, and she became
an expatriate, living virtually all of her adult life in Europe.
The first of the Ripley novels is The
Talented Mr. Ripley, in which the ne'er-do-well Tom Ripley
commits murder and assumes the identity of his wealthy friend. In Ripley
Underground, he is in danger of being discovered to have
defrauded a large company out of a fortune, which could cost him
his wealthy wife. In Ripley's Game, a casual snub causes
Tom to concoct a scheme involving several murders, the Mafia, and
a great deal of money.
These superbly crafted tales about the
unfailingly charming but entirely reprehensible criminal are
irresistible, much like watching Mike Tyson in a boxing ring (or
out of it, for that matter). You know it's wrong to be titillated
by it, and you feel guilty about enjoying the spectacle, but it's
impossible to avert the eyes. --Otto Penzler, Amazon.com
Also in the RIpley series:
