In psychological thriller This Sweet Sickness Patricia Highsmith unveils an obsessive personality whose world becomes increasingly chaotic . . .
David Kelsey has an unshakeable conviction that life is going to work out just as he’s planned it. His one true love, Annabelle, has married another man but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be friends. And even though she is pregnant with her husband Gerald’s baby, that doesn’t mean she won’t one day reunite with David. He is certain she still loves him and, under an alias, he’s setting up home for the two of them in a town close by. All is just about going to plan until things take a murderous turn, leaving David a desperate man on the run.
‘A writer who has created a world of her own – a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger . . . Miss Highsmith is the poet of apprehension’ Graham Greene
‘Highsmith was every bit as deviant and quirky as her mischievous heroes, and didn’t seem to mind if everyone knew it’ J. G. Ballard
‘A compellingly creepy novel that foreshadowed much of what Highsmith would explore in The Talented Mr Ripley’ Sydney Morning Herald
No Moral Compass
During the first year of lockdown I decided to read the entire canon of Patricia Highsmith. I’d read The Talented Mr Ripley, but I wanted to see what the less famous novels were like. I would not,...
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