Bettie's Books

bookshelves: winter-20142015, tbr-busting-2014, published-1952

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04stvbm

Description: A tender and unsettling love story about two women - one of them married, and the other nineteen - who risk everything to be together.

Written by Patricia Highsmith, who is best-known as one of the twentieth century's most accomplished thriller-writers - a role she assumed overnight when Alfred Hitchcock turned her sublimely disturbing first novel, Strangers On A Train, into a hit movie in 1951.

Written a year later, Carol broke all the rules for the portrayal of lesbians in American fiction. Despite warnings from her publisher and her agent that a lesbian novel would ruin her new-found reputation, the book became a major best-seller, with over a million sales when it was released in paperback - and Highsmith went on to write thirty more books before her death in 1995.

Carol is a genuinely groundbreaking classic - and a truly modern love story.

Episode 1: A struggling, young theatre designer - nineteen-year old Therese Belivet - takes a temporary Christmas job in a New York store. A week before Christmas, a glamorous stranger comes into the toy department to buy a doll for her daughter - and suddenly Therese's life will never be the same again.

Episode 2: In the week before Christmas Mrs Carol Aird, a married housewife, has met Therese Belivet, a would-be theatre designer, across the counter of the toy department in a big New York store. It's now two days later, and Therese has accepted an invitation out to Carol's home in New Jersey. She hasn't told her boyfriend.

Episode 3: Carol is battling her husband for custody of their daughter, Nerinda. Three weeks after their first meeting, Therese has agreed to escape New York and accompany Carol on a car trip. Her boyfriend isn't happy.

Episode 4: Driving West across America from New York, Carol and Therese have become lovers in a motel room in the town of Waterloo. By the time they reach Utah, Carol's battle with her husband for custody of their daughter seems very far away. However, everything they've left behind is just about to catch up with them.

Episode 5: In an attempt to retain custody of her daughter, Carol has abandoned her 19 year-old lover, Therese, after her husband obtained evidence of their affair. Therese has returned to New York to try and pick up her career as a theatre designer - and to forget the woman who has torn her life apart.

Carol Miranda Richardson
Therese Andrea Deck
Mrs Robichek Beverley Klein
Miss Davis Liza Ross
Richard Gunnar Cauthery
Actor Barbara Barnes
Actor David Jarvis
Author Patricia Highsmith
Adaptor Neil Bartlett
Director Neil Bartlett


3* Strangers on a Train
3* The Price of Salt
5* The Cry of the Owl
3* The Two Faces of January
2* Small g
5* Ripley #1
5* Ripley #2
4* Ripley #3
3* Ripley #4
3* Ripley #5