The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides | Book Review
It’s been a couple of weeks since I read the last pages of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. I try to review books once I’m done with them and place them back on the bookshelf, life got in the way and this ended up living in the draft folder for a lot longer than I imagined.
I flew into the clean pages only knowing the premise of the story as my sister began reading it first. She couldn’t stop raving about a psychotherapist who scattered the pages with the ‘deepest’ quotes. After all the hype with which she sold the book to me, I finally gave in. Then I went ahead and ordered my own in paperback.
One thing I absolutely loved instantly was how quickly the book sets you inside the world of the narrator. There was not much dancing around with words before telling the story. No, none of that. It felt almost like someone had sat you down to recap what happened the previous season on a crazy show you’d only heard of before the new one started, and you were there to witness the rest play out before you.
The Silent Patient: Book Summary
On a hot summer August night, police are called to the Berenson family home after a neighbour heard gunshots. There they discover the body of fashion photographer Gabriel Berenson bound to a chair, a gun on the floor, and his painter wife Alicia Berenson sat next to the fireplace with a haunting look on her face. The scene was bloody and obscene, and the beginning of many unanswered questions.
Alicia Berenson will not speak. She did not utter even half a sentence – not a sigh of a word or a whisper drowned out by all the noise.
From her time in police custody to trial and sentencing to a psychiatric ward unit she was later placed in named The Grove, her lips made no sound even after six years.
Theo Faber, a forensic psychotherapist and narrator of the majority of the book takes a job at The Grove. He is intent on doing what no one else could do before; get Alicia to speak.
All of this you will learn in the very first few pages of the book and once you get through those, the search for the truth begins. What happened that night? Did Alicia really kill her husband? Whether she did or didn’t why resort to silence afterwards? What was she trying to say or convey by being quiet?
I will stop here because frankly there is not much else I can say without giving away too much. Also, I don’t want to run the risk of spoiling any part of the book or ruining the ‘great twist’ the book cover makes you aware is in store from every angle. The Silent Patient relies heavily on the curiosity of the reader to push forward closer to the truth. Whether you’ll be satisfied with the truth you find is a completely different story…
Like I stated earlier, The Silent Patient took no time to put things into perspective for the reader and as a rather impatient person that fact alone was a guarantee I would stick around past the first few pages. I may be impatient as heck, but I’m certainly a curious cat.
Whilst Alicia kept her lips sealed and impenetrable giving nothing away like the look on her face, Theo feels a lot closer to the reader given that he guides us through the story. It is through him we get to know all the other characters in the book like the staff at the ward and the people that knew Alicia before that summer night.
He didn’t come off as nerdy as you may imagine someone in his profession to be. Rather, his narration was relatable and often hilarious too. As Theo takes on a rather investigative role to uncover what occurred at that terrible crime scene all those years ago, we also get to gradually learn about his life and the childhood trauma that still affects him even as an adult.
To be honest, there’s not much I didn’t like about The Silent Patient. It was quite engaging, easy to read and at times thought-provoking too. When I finished reading the book, I admit I scrolled through the web to find out what others think about the insane twist and how it ends. There is a very mixed bag of opinions floating out there which caught me off guard. I mean, of course, whether you enjoy a book or not is entirely subjective. However, as someone who is not most familiar with the thriller genre or comparing it to the best of its kind, I personally enjoyed it very much. I also finished reading it pretty quickly too.
Reading The Silent Patient was like falling into a rabbit hole where the deeper down you went, the more questions you had. It’s safe to assume you can read the book in one big sitting or a short period. As I got closer and closer to the end, I did feel as though the plot was beginning to drag a little, but right about then the answers started to pop up one by one. Eventually, my inquisitive urge to know it all kept me going.
Lastly, there are some characters in the book that I think could be fleshed out more deeply. Or others I believed could serve a bigger purpose in the story but didn’t.
Overall, for me whatever shortcomings this book has was completely overshadowed by its insane plot twist. I remember reading those words as my mind registered what I was seeing while getting full-body chills. I freaked out by the end and couldn’t stop talking and ranting about it for a few days after to anyone who would listen. It’s a hard book to review without giving it all away so if you’re looking for your next read, consider this one. You are in for one heck of a ride…
Your restless romantic roamer
Have you read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides? How would you rate the book?
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