Book Review: "The Silent Patient" by Alex Michaelides

When we read thrillers, we are obviously expecting some sort of twist at the end. However, we are also expecting some facts to feel shoehorned in so that the story does not contradict itself or leaves loopholes wide open by the end. This book, however does neither of those things and yet, it is still a brilliant thriller novel. Instead, this story tells us two or three stories and as we follow each one, we have absolutely no idea how they are linked. At first, the book feels like it is jumping around but, as you get deeper and deeper into it, you realise how relevant every single little detail is and how you have completely missed the point.

This book is about a man called Theo Faber who is a psychotherapist. He goes to analyse a woman who has apparently killed her husband for no reason - her named is Alicia. Her husband's name was Gabriel. Alicia is an artist and Gabriel was a photographer for magazine models. Alicia goes completely silent after the murder, refusing to speak or even give attention to anyone. It is impossible to determine her motive and so, Theo Faber tries to shift it out of her by working on her case. He finds out that a former man he was not too fond of named Christian is also working there and Christian, Theo believes, is set on trying to sabotage his new interest in Alicia. As Theo goes behind the backs of his superiors in order to engage what happened to Alicia from her family and friends, it is still confusing and impossible to tell if there was some sort of motive. As we read, we get to know more about our narrator as well who seems to be diligently working on his case with Alicia and his life with his partner.

It's a brilliantly written book which employs many narrative techniques associated with post-modernism. We have the narrator's point of view, a first person account. We get information from his past as there are numerous flashbacks. We also get one more piece that I am not going to tell you about because it is very interesting and you need to see it to believe it yourself. What I am going to say though is this piece of narrative gives you far more understanding of what the plot is but not how it is going to play out. I cannot believe I did not discover this novel earlier, it is an absolute knock-out of a thriller.

I must have stayed up until about 1am reading it and given the fact I was sitting there since about 9:30pm should tell you something about how much I got involved with this book. Yes, you don't get 'into' the book, you get 'involved' with it.

In conclusion, I saw just how great a thriller could be written in our own modern day. All the characters were very interesting because they all seemed to have a reason for not telling the complete and entire story, but then again even the people working at the institution ("The Grove") had something they were all uncomfortable about. It is a wonderful analysis of how far we could go in order to keep ourselves concealed under layers of guilt and how this can be made worse by being perpetuated by every single person involved. A wonderful analysis of the human mind, it is a shocking and incredible thriller in which you think you may have guessed the right answer but I can tell you now, you are way off.