Book Review: THE SILENT PATIENT

Title: The Silent Patient

Author: Alex Michaelides

Publisher: Celadon Books

Pages: 336

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, married to a famous fashion photographer, Gabriel, is living the good life. They have a beautiful home, a happy life together. And yet, one day, Alicia, seemingly without any provocation, shoots her husband at point-blank range, paints a picture, says the single word, Alcestis, and then refuses to speak a single word after that.

Alicia is sentenced to a secure facility called the Grove for treatment. Criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber applies for a job at the Grove. He is anxious to heal Alicia, nay, obsessed; it would be the greatest achievement of his career. Berenson, the eponymous Silent Patient, hasn’t spoken a word six years after shooting her husband to death. Her only conscious act since being caught has been a naked self-portrait with the title, Alcestis.

Theo needs to get at the bottom of Alicia’s motivation, why she committed that dreadful act of violence against a husband she loved so much. Meanwhile, no one knows about Theo’s motivation for wanting to uncover her motive.

 

The book is written in the first person past tense PoV of Theo and the first person past tense events in Alicia’s life, as mentioned in her diary. Theo’s account of his investigation into Alicia’s state of mind and the events in his own life alternate with Alicia’s account. There are a lot of parallels between these two first-person accounts. Theo says he was saved by Katie, just as Alicia writes in her diary that she was saved by Gabriel.

Given the author’s Greek parentage, there are Greek references galore. A character is of Greek ancestry. Alicia names her self-portrait, Alcestis, after a Greek mythical heroine by the same name. Unfortunately, the connection between the painting and the play is not explored well. The book is too busy with Theo’s musings.

 

Reworking the premise of Euripides’ play, Alcestis, was a clever idea. The premise was clever, the execution not so much. There are huge plot holes littering the book. For a long time, we are deliberately misled with Theo investigating people who have some association with Alicia. There was no need to do this.

Alicia’s reasons for keeping silent make no sense at all. Why would she keep silent, then write a diary about what happened, and hide the diary, and succeed in smuggling it into the mental health facility, then succeed in keeping it hidden there for over six years?

How are we supposed to believe this? Alicia kept a diary hidden for six years. The six years she spent in a psychiatric treatment facility, and yet no one seemed to know anything about it. No one did anything about it. No one even read it.

It was amazing that no one checked her stuff in six years. Theo was a doctor and yet his stuff was checked regularly, but the patient’s possessions weren’t checked even once?

Theo came across as insufferable and know-it-all. The other characters in the Grove aren’t any better. All of them seem like stereotypes

It was odd that nobody could remember the name of Alicia’s doctor. Every time characters spoke of the doctor, they said they had forgotten the name. How convenient!

Also, Theo keeps following his wife’s lover, but never catches sight of his face. What is the likelihood of that? At some point, he should have seen the guy’s face, right?

When a certain character injects Alicia with a lethal dose of morphine, instead of seeking help, she sits down to write pages and pages about what actually happened.

Theo isn’t very quick on the uptake. The silent patient hands him her diary and for the greater part of the book he wonders what he should do with it. I wanted to tell you, you nutter, balance it on your head, so you can improve your posture.