The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

 

The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

The Silent Patient follows psychotherapist Theo Faber as he investigates the reasons behind the silence of his famous artist patient, Alicia Berenson, after the murder of her husband. But the story isn't as simple as it seems.

Alicia refuses to speak and is being kept heavily sedated in a psychiatric unit. Theo thinks he can help her. He has an intense interest in her case. He conducts private sessions with her and eventually she appears to begin to open up to him, offering him her diary to read, where she details her life in the several weeks prior to her husbands death. She wrote that some man had been watching her house. Then he finds a way to get her her own space ot paint in the hopes she will communicate in that way. And she does, but the message in the resulting image was lost on me until the end.

Meanwhile, Theo believes his wife, Kathy, is having an affair. He finds sexual emails between her and an unknown man. Theo decides to follow her movements and find out the truth, which he does, and he decides he is going to take care of this man in order to save his marriage.

Theo, working covertly and against direct orders from his superiors, delves into Alicia's life and the various potential threats she was under by various men: her brother-in-law, and her former gallerist, namely. Just as Theo tells Alicia he believes that she was being watched, and that it wasn't just a manifestation of her psychosis as everyone else states, he finds that she has been attacked and is now in a coma.

The exciting twist to the story reveals that the watching man had still been watching the whole time, in fact had infiltrated the hospital. I won't say any more, if any one is to read this post; the reveal would totally ruin the story. But the twist itself took this book from a 3-star read to a 4-star read. 

For most of The Silent Patient I found myself not very excited to get back to the story after I had put it down. Nothing particularly interesting was happening. The twist arrives around the 260-page mark and I'm glad I kept reading to that point because the resulting last 60 pages were extremely interesting storytelling. And I keep thinking I should have figured it out sooner. It seemed so obvious. The writing was just average until then, the characters seemed run of the mill. To be honest, I was getting very tired of Alicia's lack of response to Theo (or anyone), and it was verging on annoying. But just when I thought I had it figured out, I found out how wrong I was, and I think the twist and resolution were masterful.

I can't give the book more than 4 stars, simply because I didn't feel compelled to read it most of the time. The twist definitely saved it.