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Customer Reviews of This Sweet Sickness

The madman
The book "The Sweet Sickness" is written of Patricia Highsmith. It deals with a man (David) who is head over heels in love with Annabelle. They were a couple in the past, but now Annabelle is married. David can not forget her. He writes her a lot of letters and he also tries to meet her. But without any success she don't want him, he gets crazier and crazier and at least he kills two people but not on purpose. In the book David lives a double life.
I like the book because of the excitement, all the time something happens and it's not boring to read it. On account of the different interpersonal relations the book gets very interesting. I think you can put yourself in the place of David and for this reason you live with him and hope he gets Annabelle back. You have compassion of him. I also like the style which Highsmith chose for her book.

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How love can make people sick....
The book This Sweet Sickness plays in the United States and is about David Kelsey, a young scientist who is obsessed with Annabelle, a married woman with whom he once had a short relationship.
His life is split up in two parts, during the weeks David lives in a boarding house. Every weekend he pretends to go visiting his ill mother but instead of that he goes to his house which he has bought under another name, William Neumeister. At his house he imagines a life with Annabelle.
During the book, David always tries to win Annabelle over. He writes to her hoping to persuade her to meet him and phones her very obstinately. He refuses to believe that she loves her husband Gerald and not him. One day, Gerald has enough of David's calls and letters. He gets drunk and comes to see David at his house. There they have a quarrel and unfortunately Gerald dies. David begins to lead a double-life for to confuse the police. His life becomes very complicate but he succeeds for a long time that the police don't realize that David Kelsey and William Neumeister are the same person. Only when there is a second death caused by David, the police come to the right conclusion. During the whole story, David doesn't resign trying to win over Annabelle...
It's really interesting to read this book and to feel with a common man who is obsessed with a woman he will never be able to reach...

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Dull Camp
By far the weakest Highsmith effort. Tedious to the point of eyestrain, with a prose "style" that waffles between cliche and camp. I was dis-dis-disappointed. Glacial pace. The book is redeemed by its final forty pages--the very end is quite moving, actually. But how many times can we read (paraphrase):

__Wes clapped David on the shoulder. "Have a drink, Dave, and forget about that girl for a while." David felt a rush of anger spread to his cheeks. Forget about Annabelle? He had her name tattooed on his ass! He looked again at Wes's pleading eyes, then again at Effie's maudlin, pitiful face. A rush of anger welled within him and spread to his nose. He would leave the house at once! He needed socks, knit socks, more of Mrs. Beecham's knit socks. He ordered two martinis and retired to his room to masturbate furiously over Annabelle's 50th non-existent letter.__