The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides | 2bookspermonth 月读二书书评网

Introduction

The Silent Patient is a mystery novel. I know it from Goodreads Choice Awards 2019. This book is the winner of the Mystery & Thriller category.

Author

Alex Michaelides is a screenwriter and an author. His productions include The Devil You Know and The Con Is On. This book is his debut novel.

Content

The author organizes this book into 5 parts. There is a prologue at the beginning.

Part One contains 10 chapters.

There are 34 chapters in Part Two.

Part Three has just 1 chapter.

There is a total of 21 chapters in Part Four.

Part Five consists of 3 chapters.

The chapters have no title except for those that are named Alicia Berenson’s Diary. These chapters contain the entries in her diary.

Review

The Silent Patient revolves around a homicide case. Alicia Berenson was found guilty of murdering her husband but she remained silent since the death of her husband and was incarcerated in a psychiatric facility. The protagonist is Theo Faber, a psychotherapist and is the narrator of this story. We experience the plot from his point of view.

Theo wanted to get Alicia to talk about what happened and managed to get into the facility where Alicia was at. In the end, he succeeded but the truth is quite shocking. All the events took place in England.

This book explores the effect of childhood trauma on adulthood. The author also talks about marijuana addiction. Though the theme is quite heavy, the novel is easy to read. I believe Alicia is based on Alcestis, the female protagonist of a Greek tragedy, and Alcestis is also frequently mentioned in the book. What intrigued me the most in this novel is the twist. I will give a slight hint to this twist. Theo is not who he appeared to be.

Quotes

We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.
Murderous rage, homicidal rage, is not born in the present. It originates in the land before memory, in the world of early childhood, with abuse and mistreatment, which builds up a charge over the years, until it explodes – often at the wrong target.
Love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.