In as much as I think that I could live only reading fantasy and sci-fi, I do get the occasional urge to read something in a different genre. I think it’s my way of avoiding genre fatigue, but sometimes you just want a good mystery. Especially when it’s so hot, the weather puts you off on reading a straight up horror title. The Silent Patient was constantly suggested to me in the Kindle store and in Scribd, and I was intrigued by its win as a Goodreads Choice under the Mystery and Thriller category. So, it was an easy enough pick once I felt the urge to read a mystery came up.
Famous painter Alicia Berenson no longer speaks. Not to defend herself after being accused of killing her husband. Not to explain her equally mysterious painting after the murder. Not a sound for years. And criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber is determined to find out why Alicia has remained mute, even crossing the lines of his practice to uncover the truth behind the silence.
In the novel, you switch between Theo and Alicia’s perspectives, the former recounting his attempts to treat Alicia, his own history and his home life, while the latter are diary entries Alicia wrote prior to the death of her husband. Theo finds Alicia to be an enigmatic figure, not just in her silence, but also in the rather varied recollections of the people who used to be in her life. Though sharing the common thread of admiring her beauty and talent, it would appear that they held their own individual interpretations of who she really was. It’s only in Alicia’s accounts in her diary that you understand that people tell their own versions of stories and it gets harder to find out who had good or ill intentions towards her. And as she succumbs to the darker parts of her personality in her diary entries, you get the sense that Alicia might not be a reliable narrator herself.
And the same could be said of Theo, with his dogged attempts to unravel Alicia’s reasons for keeping silent. In treating Alicia, he reveals his own struggles with his emotional and mental health that led him to taking up psychotherapy as a profession. In as much as it’s Alicia’s psyche that requires unraveling, the same for Theo’s motivation to get her to speak draws you in as a reader. As everyone he talks to seems to dissemble parts of their stories about Alicia, you wonder if Theo is doing the same to us readers in his version of events.
The Silent Patient is crafted to make you think about its characters, wondering who to believe and who to accuse. There’s a slow build, especially as Theo delves into his investigations about Alicia prior to the murder, but I didn’t feel that it was dragging in its telling. And even if you felt a teensy bit impatient, author Alex Michaelides will reward you with twists that make it all worthwhile.
Happy reading!
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