Dark, brooding, intimate and masterfully crafted - I'm so glad I discovered this lesser known story by Patricia Highsmith, This is an intense exploration of desire and obsession, as chilling as it is impactful. God bless Virago!

Loved this lesser known but not lesser quality book by Patricia Highsmith. Know her more famous works but this was just as engaging and suspenseful as those.

Patricia Highsmith I love you. and Virago books I love you!

This Sweet Sickness explores the dark side of attraction and desire. Highsmith excellently portrays how fixations can become very unhealthy, especially when they involve a love interest in someone who doesn't feel the same way in return. Such fixations can develop into delusions if they go unregulated, which is very apparent in the characters of David and Effie, who eventually engage in extreme and illicit behaviour to secure the possibility of one day being with the person who they believe is their soul mate. In regards to all of the characters (who seem to be deranged in one way or another), there is a relentless pattern of admiration and rejection.

In that last-quarter flare I found the best prose: from a memorable passage about spoken words still certainly existing somewhere to the powerful last sentence.

Reading This Sweet Sickness has sparked my enthusiasm for all things Patricia Highsmith. What an amazing talent for crafting uniquely intriguing characters. In this outing the reader is treated to (sociopath?) David Kelsey. Not quite to the level of Tom Ripley but full of his own neurosis (with made up aliases at the ready!), mainly driven by his fixation on Annabelle. Once, years ago, possibly a fleeting couple but now letter writing friends, in a fashion. The fact that she is married does not decrease David's obsession with her and his sureness that one day soon she will be his. As the story unfolds his issues seem to manifest and expand in a wider scope adding intrigue as the direction of travel becomes ever increasingly bumpy.

I was smitten by this and am now keen to revisit The Talented Mr. Ripley, as a consequence of enjoying this novel so much. It's a rare treat to delve so deeply into a less than healthy brain, and even more rare to enjoy the imbalance from a safe distance, as a reader. In this novel, set in the late 50s, I revelled in the propriety of the time. Social graces and dressing for dinner, no mobile phones or internet. A simpler time I am certain I was meant to dwell in. Such great fun watching David unravel, I recommend it.

As Patricia Highsmith seems to be "rediscovered" by the younger generation, probably thanks to the Netflix production based on her most famous novel, it's not surprising that "This Sweet Sickness" was published in the context of modern classics.

This novel is an interesting study of delusional obsession and stalking tendencies of David. Having only access to the protagonist's point of view, as readers, we only have access to what the character "wants" to tell us. The first-person narrative is interesting in this case because there's a lot of intensity given to the most benign moments but not to what's the most violent.

Yet, at times the story feels just too monotone to be engaging, certain scenes are repetitive, such as Dave's interactions with Wes and Effie. The climax towards the end feels a bit anticlimactic, and the ending fell flat and unsatisfying for me.

It's a piece of historic fiction that, depending on an angle it's read from, may be quite interesting (like the angle of mental disorder or even trying to understand Annabel's motivations to keep in touch with the protagonist), but I don't think it's a literature that one reaches for for the pure enjoyment.

I really enjoyed this book about David Kelsey and his delusional love for Annabelle, married to another man. He’s the ideal tenant in his boarding house, a good worker at his job, visits his mother in her nursing home every weekend….. or is something else going on? It’s slow paced to start with but the ending is hard to look away from as everything falls apart. An intense read.

A chilling portrait of obsessive love, now wrapped in Virago’s striking new covers. Highsmith’s psychological precision is as sharp as ever, unsettling, claustrophobic, and impossible to look away from.

Patricia Highsmith is definitely a talented writer and she writes characters with depth. I enjoyed following around David, while being aware of his success, mental health, love, mind, everything. This wouldn't be my favorite Patricia Highsmith (I have yet to read many more from her to find out), but this book was a good one.

Thank you to Virago and NetGalley for the digital copy of this book in return for an honest review.
I really enjoyed this read, the skill of the writer is evident on every page, the only reason I didn’t give a 5* is that there is a section somewhere around the middle of the story which felt a bit repetitive and unnecessary. Otherwise the intimate thoughts and actions of David, a man with serious mental health problems, are written so well that one could sympathise with him at times, even though he was doing so much wrong. The story moves at a good pace and it never felt clear how it was going to end, there were many times that David infuriated me too - how could he go on thinking as he did? I didn’t particularly like the end, but that’s fine, life doesn’t always dish up everything we like, and it definitely didn’t spoil the book for me. Highly recommended.

David Kelsey is in love. Not just ordinarily in love but loving Annabelle with an obsession that will lead to murder, the complete terrifying of his beloved and to his complete unravelling psychologically. David is a man with a successful career, a very fine brain and friends who care about him, but none of that matters in his quest for the love of Annabelle. There is not much light relief in this novel, but being a witness to the unravelling of a fine human being is absolutely gripping - it’s also disturbing and almost unbearably tragic, but Patricia Highsmith draws the reader into the narrative with a deep understanding of the human psyche, a very fine sense of place and always plenty of impetus to drive the story forwards.

This book had a great plot with intriguing characters. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author.

I will start by saying that nobody knew how to write a narcissistic sociopath quite like Patricia Highsmith. This novel was deeply unsettling from start to finish, and there are lots of similarities to The Talented Mr Ripley: the adopted aliases, the obsession, the complete dissociation and delusion - all classic Highsmith devices - they are ever-present here.

It was a completely compulsive experience and I kept reading to discover developments, but I can’t help but feel that this would have benefitted from a serious edit, or even perhaps instead been a novella or a short story. I understand that we have to see and experience David (our protagonist) descend into total madness, but around the 2/3 mark I found the book a little repetitive and dare I say - monotonous.

The characters were all deeply unlikeable, bordering on the grotesque, and although I didn’t mind this much, I found it difficult to connect with any of them, which perhaps reflects David’s mindset as we are reading and perceiving the world from his POV. 

Suffice it to say I don’t know how I feel about this one. Was it good? I don’t know. Was it an enjoyable read? Perhaps not. Could I help but read every bit? No. 

_

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Being in David's head is disturbing from the outset and because the story is told from his perspective it is really hard to decide what is real and what he just wants to be real! The "situation" he is trying to resolve highlights his obsession and delusion and when it is revealed that he has a second identity early on alarm bells ring!
A very deftly woven tale.

David Kelsey is a man with a mission. He wants the love of his life, Annabelle, to become his wife and live with him in mutual bliss. The only problem with his plan is that she is already married to Gerald and has been for the last two years. David refers to this as ‘the situation’. But that doesn’t deter him from sending her letters professing his love for her and inviting her to run away and join him. In contrast, her replies to him are vague and conciliatory.
They once were in a relationship but it is now long over. Annabelle has moved on but David hasn’t and doesn’t want to. In his eyes she ticks all his boxes so they should be together.
However, David is leading a double life. As David Kelsey he lives in a rooming house in New York and is known as the ‘The Saint’. By day he works as a research scientist and it’s common knowledge by the other tenants that he spends every weekend with his invalid mother who lives in a nursing home in another town. However, his mother is dead and has been for some years. But Mrs McCartney, his landlady, worries that he will never find
‘a girl good enough to be his wife.’
But he doesn’t as, every weekend, he becomes William Neumeister and steps into another life that no one knows about. He sees William Neumeister as:
‘the better half of him that had never failed.’
In Ballard, he has a lovely house and it’s filled with objects that he knows Annabelle will love. He is waiting for the day when she finally accepts his love and adoration and lives with him. For him, the house is a place where:
‘he feels Annabelle’s presence in every room.’
But sometimes he has a realisation that what he’s doing isn’t normal as, after raising a toast to an absent Annabelle, he reminds himself that:
‘No use in being that absurd. A man could start losing his mind if he kept that kind of thing up.’
In the meantime he comforts his old friend Wes who is having problems with his marriage to Laura. He had envied Wes’s apparent happiness at first and knew that he had been almost jealous but had consoled himself with the thought that it would:
‘never happen to him and Annabelle.’
He becomes friendly with another boarder, Effie, who joins forces with Wes.
But he isn’t put off by Annabelle having a baby with Gerald and visits their house to inform all present that she will be coming away with him. She tries to reason with him but it’s no use. He believes that her marriage should never have happened and had tried to persuade her to undo it.
Finally, Gerald, fuelled by a few drinks and carrying a gun, visits David at the Ballard house to have it out with him. And David’s house of cards begins to fall down piece by piece as Effie tells him that she knows his mother is dead and that she and Wes have been snooping around the Ballard house. She’s also met Annabelle……
This is a story of obsession and jealousy by a man who is trapped within them. He just cannot move on and despite having a good job and respect as a research scientist and a circle of friends. I was incredulous at how much David was getting away with. Nowadays he would certainly have a restraining order against him. This book was written in 1960 and is told from his point of view and what he wants. It’s only when the reader stands back from the action that they realise how warped David’s plans are.
Annabelle marries twice in the book to men that David considered to be beneath her. Even worse he is surrounded by people who are equally enmeshed. Wes has a toxic relationship with his wife, Laura, and Effie, seems bewildered that David doesn’t feel the same way. In fact he calls her:
‘this common little stenographer’
David doesn’t not want to accept that Annabelle is capable of making her own decisions although towards the end she tells police that:
‘she was frightened of him.’
At one point she tells him that:
‘she’s tired of David meddling in her life.’
Unfortunately it’s too late for him to stop….
This was the author’s seventh book and it’s a finely honed story of a psychopath who I felt early on was heading towards his own self destruction. His two lives were going to collide at some point This is the first Patricia Highsmith book that I’ve read although I’ve heard that they are not for the faint hearted. She really got inside the mind of a deluded, obsessive man whose life was going in ever decreasing circles until he’s completely trapped. I could see no way out for him as the final chapters showed him completely over the edge, still completely lost in fantasies until the last shattering sentence. I did feel for Annabelle with her being the target for David and trying to cope with the situation as this man persisted in invading her life.
There was an Edward Hopper quality to some of the scenes especially the ones in New York.
I like a dark thriller and ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ is next on my list.

Patricia Highsmith has the uncanny ability of being able to allow readers into the strange private world that is her character's inner thoughts and feelings and show us their slow decline into insanity all the while hearing their justifications for their actions and the actions of others.

Another excellent read from Patricia Highsmith, the author who brought us the unforgettable character Tom Ripley.

In This Sweet Sickness, Highsmith brings us on a journey where we find ourselves deep in the complexities of a delusional mind. David's obsession with Annabelle, who he passionately believes is 'his' is driven by both fantasy and jealousy. The book takes an even darker turn when the dead bodies start turning up. It's a mildly disorientating view of how a person can separate so profoundly from reality that they create an alternative and twisted reality. I really enjoyed reading it though I did find Annabelle quite frustrating. At the risk of victim blaming, I couldn't decide whether she was manipulative or that she lacked the confidence to be more definitive in her communications with David. I found it a challenging read but well worth taking the challenge.

David is a reasonably successful scientist. He spends Monday to Friday living in a boarding house near his work; at the weekend, whilst telling his fellow boarders that he is looking after his invalid mother, he heads to a house he has bought and furnished for Annabelle, an ex-girlfriend of his, and the love of his life. He imagines his life with her when he managed to persuade her to become his wife; trouble is, she is already married. Not to worry, he is sure that the letters he keeps sending her will make her see the error she has made.

Throughout the novel, he becomes increasingly desperate, and his behaviour escalates, leading him into a tangled web of lies and fantasy.

This is all told from David's point of view, so although I didn't sympathise with him, I was aware of how he was able to justify his actions to himself, which made for an odd, and slightly unsettling reading experience. I was frustrated with Annabelle, who we only see through David's eyes, although we can see that she is not interested. I wondered what would have happened if she had been former with him, instead of agreeing to meet him, and take his phone calls.

I did feel that it dragged in places; it took a long time to get going, but once it did, was thoroughly enjoyable.

*Many thanks to Netgally and Virago for a copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*

This Sweet Sickness was my first Highsmith novel and I was hooked from the beginning! David Kelsey, a young and somewhat successful man, is certain that the love of his life, the one that got away - Annabelle, will realise the error of her ways and return to him. This is despite the fact that she has recently married someone else and is expecting her first child. Steadfast in his conviction, David squirrels away his expendable income by renting a small, poky room in a shared house. Pretending to the other tenants and work colleagues that he spends his weekends looking after his aging mother, he instead spends those blissful forty-eight hours in a house he has bought under an alias, living out the life he hopes to secure once he wins Annabelle back.

Highsmith brilliantly ramps up the tension in this novel, unravelling David’s obsessive delusion bit by bit until his facade comes crashing down. It was chilling to see a character like David, whose sinister violence and need for control bubbles just below the surface, lauded by those around him as a ‘promising young man’ (haven’t we all heard this either intimately or in news stories - a kind of disbelief that a man with such talent/promise/success can also be an awful human being?). He is trusted by his aunt and uncle who brought him up after the death of his parents, his landlady who finds him to be a model tenant, the young woman, Effie, who still hopes her love will be reciprocated even after the cruelty he enacts on her and his closest colleague who looks up to him with respect.

I did, however, find the pacing slow down every now and again and just wanted to escape David’s world at times. But this is perhaps testament to the almost claustrophobic atmosphere Highsmith creates. Overall, I was appalled (by the character) and impressed (by the writing) in equal measure and will be picking up one of her most well-known novels, The Talented Mr Ripley, soon (I just finished watching Ripley on Netflix which was superb and there was also a bit of commentary on the book in Nathalie Olah’s Bad Taste which I found interesting)!

Patricia Highsmith is a master of psychological tension, and This Sweet Sickness is a perfect example of her ability to turn obsession into something quietly terrifying. This novel is an unsettling character study of David Kelsey, a man consumed by his delusional love for a woman who has moved on—though he refuses to accept it.

Highsmith’s writing is cold, precise, and utterly compelling. She doesn’t rely on dramatic action to create suspense; instead, the creeping unease comes from being trapped inside David’s twisted mind as his fantasies and reality blur. The novel moves at a measured pace, but the psychological unraveling is fascinating to watch.

While David is a frustrating protagonist, (his obsessive thoughts can feel repetitive) the novel’s slow-burn tension and masterful character work make up for it. The ending, while not entirely surprising, is deeply unsettling in that classic Highsmith way.

Overall, This Sweet Sickness is a chilling, brilliantly written psychological thriller that lingers long after the final page. A solid 4 stars.

Patricia Highsmith is a master at showing ordinary, domestic life, and then planting a seed of something awful that blooms throughout the story. This novel, like her others, excels in its portrayal of guilt: the anti-hero would get away with everything, if he could only stop sabotaging himself. The slow corrosion of his mind is fascinating and repulsive in equal parts. What starts out a slow story becomes gradually tenser and tenser as we wait for him to collapse while we can't stand to see it. I can see why this isn't as renowned as her other works, but if you've already read Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley, this is a great one to sink into next.