I had heard a lot about Alex Michaelides’ ‘The Silent Patient’. Authors like C.J Tudor and Lee Child whom I considered the masters of thrillers were raving about it, calling it smart, sophisticated and a very clever book. It’s also being adapted into a screenplay for Brad Pitt’s production company. I put off reading it because the blurb made it sound like a garden-variety thriller. I only picked it up when I wanted a light read. I felt I could read a few pages and then do something else and come back to it and so on and so forth. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. The blurb doesn’t do justice to the riveting story. The Silent Patient is a taut psychological thriller that you won’t be able to put down.

Alicia Berenson, a rising artist, has been convicted of murdering her fashion-photographer husband, Gabriel. But after shooting him in the head five times, she stops speaking. She is taken to the Grove, a secure psychiatric unit, but no medication or treatment can make her talk. Theo Faber, a London-based psychotherapist, is obsessed with Alicia as he has spent two decades in therapy himself, trying to overcome the trauma induced by a father who was cruel to him. As Alicia has had a similar upbringing, he feels she will be able to connect with him and that he is the only one who can make her talk.

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The narrative has Alicia’s journal entries that give us an insight into her life because by the time we meet her she has already stopped talking. We also get to know other people like her husband, Gabriel, her brother-in-law, Max, and some of her friends through these entries. And they are all intriguing, undecipherable characters. Theo, while conducting therapy sessions with Alicia, also speaks to some of her relatives and acquaintances.

The switch between the two voices is refreshing and keeps you hooked because you feel like you are on the verge of discovering something that could be crucial to the plot. Michaelides is primarily a writer of screenplays and that skill has come in handy while working on The Silent Patient—the scenes are so descriptive and thus easy to visualize.

I liked the writing style of The Silent Patient. Not everything is explicitly stated but you can draw a lot of conclusions by analyzing the information you are given. Michaelides keeps throwing things your way to flip the entire narrative around and you are left rethinking everything you have read and reevaluating all your thoughts. The book has several consecutive plot twists that leave you speechless and wondering if any author you have read and loved thus far can now live up to the high expectations you will have from them.

The Silent Patient

Four stars 
Fiction
Alex Michaelides
Published: 2019
Publisher: Orion Books
Pages: 341, Paperback