Carol

Her life was a series of zigzags. At nineteen she was anxious. Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store, secretly lost in a life that feels anything but one she has chosen. Then, one day, a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is awkward, with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realizes how much they both stand to lose...First published pseudonymously in 1952 as The Price of Salt, Carol is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of fifties' New York. "It flowed from my pen as if from nowhere – beginning, middle and end. It took me about two hours, perhaps less" - Patricia Highsmith