The unnamed lovers, a photographer and a dancer, talk and touch and sleep in the same bed well before they finally give in to desire. More slow-burning passion is found in one of 2021’s most celebrated debuts, Azumah Nelson’s elegant boy-meets-girl tale set in late 00s London. Through Therese, Carol is presented to us as impossibly sexy but always slightly out of reach, creating the perfect conditions for desire to build. As a reader you know it is all going to go wrong – homosexuality was illegal in 1950s New York, the novel’s setting, and ultimately the sex scene we wait so long for threatens to ruin Carol’s chances of gaining custody of her daughter – but Highsmith has you completely under her spell, and you can’t help but root for this ill-fated couple. More commonly known as Carol, this tale of aspiring set designer Therese, who falls in love with an older woman, is a masterclass in sexual tension.
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