A review by kalauandromeda
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 Really enjoyed this book a lot. I don't think this is a book that appeals to everyone as it did to me, and the reason I say this is it's kind of a slow burn thriller and I always liked a show of that genre that involved a police or detective investigation. Well the premise being really interesting goes without saying. A patient who killed her husband and refuses to speak to anyone even after 6 years. We get introduced to Theo Faber, a guy who really wants to help her come to her senses and is a psychotherapist.

At the initial phases of the book, when Theo was getting a lot of focus, especially on the parts where we dig into his screwed up past, I became aware that this is not a book that focuses solely on the demons of Alicia Berenson. I thought that helping Alicia might somehow help him face his demons and overcome his struggles with himself. Later on when Alicia's diary entries were presented to us, it somehow felt that the both of them are eerily similar in a lot of things like their disturbed upbringing, shady behaviour and losing their way until they found the love of their lives and thus thrusting all their past behind and entering a toxic kind of relationship with them, thinking they desperately need their counterparts in their life and do anything to keep them in their lives. I then thought it might be something like Shutter Island kind of thing, where Theo and Alicia are indeed the same person and it is all Theo creating an Alicia and thinking himself as a doctor. Then we are shown that Theo goes and does an investigation!!! I knew at that moment that it's not normal for someone to do this just because he was curious and wanted to help. It was like he was trying to help her because her life was so much like him, but unlike us he didn't know that then, so why? Meanwhile we were shown that Theo's wife Kathy cheats on him and somehow left the mail open and left it for him to stumble upon it. It was here that I was almost sure that Gabriel cheated on Alicia, because I was always of the thought that both their lives are very similar. We see him having a nervous breakdown in the nights and re visiting his old therapist in the middle of the night and in the morning he's not at all shown vulnerable in the office and not at all distracted. I initially thought that a good psychotherapist needs to keep his work and personal life seperate and he might be good at it, but at the end of the day, even he's just another human. For some reason it always bugged me. At this stage, I was not sure if Kathy really was having an affair and if that mystery person was real. Then after a lot of thorough investigation into her state of mind and allowing her to paint and almost losing their therapy sessions together, she finally starts to talk with him and in their sessions implies that everything changed when he entered the picture either directly or indirectly. Sometime before this moment, we were shown that Theo follows Kathy and finally confirms that there is a guy she was having an affair and it was this moment I connected most of the dots. I went back to the chapters of Kathy and saw that the pieces I have been holding at the back of mind fell together like a jigsaw puzzle. I quickly realised that never was there a mention or any indication that this was the present and I knew in my gut that this was Gabriel. It blew my mind, there were not many instances where I felt this kind of thrill and amazement at the same time. So, this changed my perspective of reading the book from this point and coming back to the present I knew that Theo should be this stalker that Alicia was talking about. I think Theo really didn't mean for her to kill him, but rather make their marriage fall apart and trust being broken as this was what manning up would be, and he did this unconsciously wanting to please his father.

The connection with Alcestis and Theo being right about most of our impulses are not really actions taken at the spur of the moment, rather they always have their roots buried deep in our past are really cool. 

That said , I think the climax or the ending of the book is not quite what I expected. There are a lot of things that did not sit with me well, for example, Alicia refused to speak after the incident because, there was nothing to get out of doing it, there was nothing to accomplish, the worst has happened. Then I don't get why she put that much effort to holding on to her diary and that too with no one else ever knowing about it's existence. Like how on earth did you smuggle that in girl? Even at the end, where Theo injected her with drugs strong enough to put her to coma for the rest of the life, where did she get the energy and time to write it on a diary and hide the book in the back of the painting, she could have literally called and cried for help and told someone while making herself a coffee with the time she did the other things. Theo feeling that so this is how it comes to an end and making the discovery of a needle hole near her veins also doesn't make sense and I consider it a poor writing choice as this was in the first person and as Theo was the culprit, there is no sense in him not knowing the act. There are still some small issues, but I think this is a great book overall.