Monday, March 13, 2006
Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Price of Salt, from 1952, does a great job of capturing the era - in particular, it’s a sympathetic portrayal of an somewhat innocent / naive / young nineteen year-old, New York girl, working in a department store as Christmas help, while dreaming of starting her career in set design off-Broadway, who isn’t in love with the boy who loves her and ends up falling in love with a somewhat older woman who is going through a painful divorce. This was only Highsmith’s second novel (she wrote over twenty) and occasionally it does feel like she’s trying a little too hard - the prose is amazingly careful observed, but perhaps now and then slightly forced. But the major characters are well realized, and feel very much like real people. And I think the book does a really great job of capturing the confusing feelings of falling madly in love, of dreaming about mixing your life into another persons, while never really being able to be sure what’s going through that other person’s mind (maybe they’re just playing with you? etc). The later half of the book takes place out on the road, and again, does a wonderful job of capturing that feeling of driving driving and driving across America, small towns and endless highways of unlimited possibility. And the possibility to find out who you really are, what kind of life you want to lead.
