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charlote_1347 's review for:
Carol
by Patricia Highsmith, Claire Morgan
I've only read one of Highsmith's works, The Talented Mr Ripley, and I loved it. It was gritty, intelligent and matter-of-fact. Another of her novels, her first, is also on my reading list. Carol, on the other hand, only caught my attention because of its film adaptation. But a dated novel about a lesbian relationship in New York seemed like an interesting read, so I went for it. Therese was a mediocre character - dull and flawed, but this only made her emotional growth more satisfying. Carol was the opposite - a dynamic, mysterious figure that caught my sympathy and attention straight away, but gradually lost them as the story progressed. I grew frustrated with her behaviour and her deliberate aloofness. It became irrelevant to me - the time period, the necessity for secrecy, their clandestine looks and touches. I wanted honesty and affection to be apparent between them, and I felt that it never was, even in their most private moments. The film, from what I've seen of the trailer, will rectify this. Provide the reader/audience with something tangible, something that will make their relationship feel real and authentic. I can't say the writing style or the characters or the world-building were bad - they weren't. They were brilliant. But this left a...void. I felt that Carol and Therese didn't earn what has been portrayed as an epic love story, that their encounters were frank and devoid of that spark that makes romances jump off their pages. The best way to describe it, I think, is that I felt like I was reading a summary of the novel, instead of the actual thing.