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mythicreader 's review for:
This Sweet Sickness
by Patricia Highsmith
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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Book 1 in my classics reading challenge.
A dark dive into a man obsessed with a woman he can’t have as he slowly descends into madness from it.
I appreciated its writing and Highsmith is clearly Queen of unreliable narrators and tense situations. I found it, perhaps, too long in places as we watch him slowly lose his mind but it picked up near the end. I did predict a lot of the main narrative but this is a book about character not plot so that’s okay. It’s definitely a character study kind of novel and that is done well.
It isn’t something I’d gravitate towards naturally, but I am glad to have read a Highsmith novel.
As it says in the intro by Sarah Hilary:
Book 1 in my classics reading challenge.
A dark dive into a man obsessed with a woman he can’t have as he slowly descends into madness from it.
I appreciated its writing and Highsmith is clearly Queen of unreliable narrators and tense situations. I found it, perhaps, too long in places as we watch him slowly lose his mind but it picked up near the end. I did predict a lot of the main narrative but this is a book about character not plot so that’s okay. It’s definitely a character study kind of novel and that is done well.
It isn’t something I’d gravitate towards naturally, but I am glad to have read a Highsmith novel.
As it says in the intro by Sarah Hilary:
Highsmith demands close attention, repaying it in the dubious coin of discomfort. We're deep inside the heads of her characters, seeing the world through the dark lens of their delusion, or desire, or indifference.