The Price of Salt

Romance

Print length: 276 pagesArno Press, 1975

Description

Therese Belivet, a lonely young woman in Manhattan, hopes to build a career designing theatre sets while working in a department-store toy section. There she meets Carol Aird, an elegant older customer enduring a difficult separation. Therese reaches out, Carol responds, and their connection develops into a romantic attachment. The women leave the city for a western road trip, where their intimacy becomes explicit. Meanwhile, Carol’s estranged husband restricts her access to their daughter. A private investigator follows and records the couple for use in the custody dispute, forcing Carol to confront the possibility that continuing the relationship could cost her custody.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Direct · Spare

Pace

Measured

Tone

Intimate · Romantic · Tense · Wistful

Structure

Linear

Focus

Atmosphere · Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

ClassFreedomIsolationLoveParenthoodSexuality

About Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer whose nearly five-decade career centered on psychological suspense. She is best known for the five novels featuring Tom Ripley, a cultivated criminal whose deceptions bring her recurring concerns with identity and conventional morality into sharp focus. Highsmith typically treats crime less as a puzzle than as pressure applied to a mind or relationship. Her direct, often spare prose draws readers close to compromised perspectives without telling them what to think, creating unease through identification rather than spectacle. She sometimes alternates between principal viewpoints, while premises such as the proposed exchange of murders in Strangers on a Train or the corrosive marital arrangement in Deep Water let guilt and complicity pass between characters. Her range also extended beyond the thriller: The Price of Salt follows a love affair between two women with the same close attention to isolation, desire, and social constraint. Across these different settings, Highsmith’s distinction lies in the calm precision with which she makes unstable moral positions feel intimate and plausible.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Arno Press
Language: English
ISBN: 9780405073847

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