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I wanted to read this before watching the movie ("Carol"), but I first found out about it from the fictional librarian in Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness. From the marketing of this title I could not tell if it was more of a love story or a thriller, and knowing Patricia Highsmith I held my breath through the entire book waiting for someone to turn into a sociopath.

This novel is set in the early 1950s, a time where not many women were openly involved in relationships with one another, leaving Therese without a framework and Carol with a choice - Therese or her daughter. Originally Highsmith published it under a pen name and did not own up to being the author of the book for at least twenty years. In the 1950s there were several lesbian pulp romance novels, but the accepted mode was that because of their "unacceptable" choices, someone had to end up with something tragic happening as "punishment." The original cover includes the tagline "the novel of a love society forbids," which would make you think the focus of the story is the two women against the world. It really isn't, it's far more subtle, two women figuring out their relationship within the typical conflicts of previous relationships and ongoing commitments. As romance goes, this was pretty realistic.

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