10/2: at the end

Today I finished reading The Price of Salt, published in 1952 by Patricia Highsmith under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. I started it because I enjoyed Highsmith's craft in The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I had read that The Price of Salt was one of the first novels about a same-sex relationship to have a happy ending.

For most of the time I was reading it, I wasn't sure I liked it. It didn't seem to pull me in narratively and psychologically the way Ripley immediately did (although, having grown up in a theatre family, I enjoyed Highsmith's choice to make the main character a fledgling stage-designer). Last night, when I put the novel down with 30 pages to go, I didn't see how a happy ending could be possible. I finished it this morning as I ate my breakfast and drank my coffee--and, yes, it does have a happy ending. It comes only at the last possible minute, and yet it doesn't feel pulled out of a hat. By the time I finished the last paragraph, it all seemed right. Patricia Highsmith doesn't sound like she was a pleasant woman in real life, but she certainly knows how the machine of a novel can be made to work on the mind and emotions of a reader, and there's a kind of pleasure in being taken on a narrative trip by an expert.