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The Silent Patient

Posted on December 9, 2019December 9, 2019 by Danielle.McCoy2010

By Alex Michaelides

What It’s About:

This book starts with a woman, Alicia Berenson, allegedly killing her husband by shooting him five times in the face. You know, like you do… After the crime is committed, she refuses to speak at all. Not when she is discovered, not while under arrest, and absolutely not at trial. The only communication we receive from the artist is a self portrait, entitled Alcestis. Try and curb your need to google its definition – the book will explain it in good time.

The narrator is a psychotherapist, Theo Faber, who is candidly honest about following her trial and wanting to have her as a patient. He goes so far as to get a job at the institution she is committed to in an effort to have her as a patient. What really happened that night in August six years ago? Why won’t she speak? What does that painting mean? How has she not needed to create anything since? The book follows him trying to get through to her.

There is exploration of passion moving to obsession. What makes a person sane or not? What makes a crime justifiable? Who is truly at fault?

AND THEN THE BEST TWIST EVER HAPPENS! Seriously. I read a lot. Like perhaps to an unhealthy degree – and every time someone recommends a book and says, “You’ll never see the twist coming!” I figure it out halfway through and read the rest to let myself feel smart. I didn’t. See. This. Coming.

Soundtrack:

“More Human than Human” by Rob Zombie

“Swan Lake Suite, Op. 20: Scene” by Peter Tchaikovsky

“Everybody’s Fool” by Evanescence

Pros & Cons & Potential Spoilers:

Pros:

  • Again, that twist!
  • Great storyline – you can feel her trepidation build and start asking yourself if you are paranoid or she is
  • There is a lurid appeal for those of us that are addicted to ID and true crime shows

Cons:

  • Somewhere between the middle and the end of the book, it starts to draaaaaaaaaaagg before that magical twist
  • Where does this “Diary” of Alicia come from if she has refused to communicate?
  • There are many points when I am exasperated that we are wasting pages on Theo’s life – get back to the crime, the drama, the Alicia story! But by the end, you understand why we had to learn so much about him.

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