When my book club picked it as our August book, I knew my time had come. It’s super hyped, has tons of buzz, and I have friends who’ve insisted that I just had to read it. I’ll be blunt - this book annoyed the hell out of me. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations-a search for the truth that threatens to consume him… Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.Īlicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety.
The silent patient ending windows#
A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. If you like mysteries with a psychological twist, I am confident you will enjoy The Silent Patient.Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. This is a quick read and engaging thriller exploring the themes of mental illness, family relationships, and marriage. Recommendation: Thriller with an Epic Twist The story is more complicated than it first appears, and all guilty parties are punished for their crimes in the end. I won’t spoil this story for anyone by saying all the pieces of the puzzle fit together nicely at the end to explain why Alicia killed her husband and how Theo gets through to Alicia to solve the mystery. I don’t read many thrillers, so I did not guess the outcome and was surprised and wowed by the twist revealing what really went wrong with Alicia and Gabriel. The ResolutionĪuthor Alex Michaelides develops strong characters as convincing decoys to throw readers off the trail of what really happened, leaving readers guessing who murdered Alicia’s husband or who might have pushed Alicia to become a killer. Theo’s wife Kathy, an actress hiding extracurricular activities of her own, even plays into the drama. And fellow Grove psychiatrist Christian, who overmedicates Alicia to keep her quiet and hides the fact that she was a patient of his off the books prior to her incarceration at The Grove. Alicia’s best friend and gallery owner Jean-Felix, who appears more interested in profiting from Alicia’s notoriety by showing her paintings than helping Theo get through to Alicia. There’s Gabriel’s brother Max, a hot-headed and frightening lawyer with the hots for his brother’s wife. Other screwed up relatives and acquaintances cast doubt on who is really to blame for Gabriel’s death, Alicia’s murderous motives, and Theo’s so-called good intentions. Alicia’s upbringing was equally traumatic, with a mother who committed suicide by car accident with Alicia along for the ride in the backseat, and a father who she overhears wishing she had died instead of her mother. Character DevelopmentĪll characters in The Silent Patient are deliciously flawed and delightfully presented, including psychotherapist Theo himself, who had a difficult upbringing with an abusive father and alcoholic mother. Alicia’s diary entries provide her mental state and explanation of circumstances leading up to the murder and pivotal developments with Theo’s therapy sessions at The Grove. Theo and Alicia’s therapy sessions are told from the first-person perspective of Theo. She’s locked up at a mental facility called The Grove, and Theo feels he’s just the person to coax her to talk again, so he can help with her mental recovery after determining why she would commit such a brutal crime in the first place. Theo Faber, a forty-something London psychotherapist, is obsessed with discovering why painter Alicia Berenson splattered her husband Gabriel’s face and brains against the wall of their home at point blank range six years ago, especially since Alicia has refused to speak a single word since the murder.
Speed reading is not the norm for me, and that unusual behavior tells you just how much I enjoyed this gripping, well-written medical drama. I finished reading the psychological thriller The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides in four days.
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