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.
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. 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. 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.