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If you read enough books, you're bound to become jaded once in a while by all the sub par ones out there and then a book like The Price of Salt comes along to remind you just how great a book can really be and what a reading experience should really be like. Yes, I loved this book THAT much :)
My only other experience with Highsmith's work until then has been through Ripley movies and I liked the character of Ripley, but not enough to track down the books. I picked up this book, because the cover said that this was the one to inspire Lolita, one of my all time favorites.
This was the author's second book, originally published under a pseudonym to avoid being typecast as a lesbian writer. It was also for years misfiled as a mystery, which it really is not. It's a coming of age story, a story about relationships and consequences, a story about a road trip, an eye opening and fairly frightening account of how lesbians were treated as recently as 60 years ago, but most of all it's a really great love story, about first love, the most difficult of all.
I've read that Patricia Highsmith has been a particularly unpleasant person, particularly during her later years, which makes it so interesting how well and sympathetically she is able to describe the inner turmoils and thoughts and actions of her characters. I'd say in this book her writing shows great humanity. Of course, I am now interested in reading her other works, though I am not even a mystery fan, just to experience more of that amazing writing.
I can't recommend this book enough.