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It’s fairly obvious from the beginning what Theo’s secret interest involves and how he ties into the overall reveal. Is there no other way to turn a narrative trick? No other backup beyond the “guess what he/she/they were crazy all along” motif? Not to say it isn’t fairly well done here (the “insane” person is not who you initially suspect), but it still smacks distinctly of wash-rinse-repeat genre fiction. It might have worked the first time it was used, but by now it’s old hat for the thriller genre and a gimmick that instantly leaves me tired and uninspired. The lead narrator(s) are distinctly unreliable, with the added use of that maybe-they’re-insane trope that is used to solve a lot of lapses in logic and give readers that “surprise” at the end. Although the subject is juicy, it’s just another version of the same sort of story we’ve seen before. I enjoyed the story, yet I don’t think it ever got beyond its status as an average thriller. Intrigued, and craving a thriller worthy of the name, I finally dusted off my copy and began, instantly immersed in the oppressive atmosphere of a sanatorium under financial constraint, barely held aloft by its one famous patient and now, one strange doctor is risking everything to answer a mystery that hits a little too close to his own secrets. Since then, as other books have come and gone, the gossip has remained hot: this thriller is a real winner, a psychological cat and mouse game that has readers coming back, again and again. I originally picked up The Silent Patient several years ago from Book of the Month as one of their selections. The threads of her life and encounters the mentors and monsters Alicia met along the way, he begins to suspect that whatever happened that dark night was more complicated than anyone could possibly guess and that Alicia’s silence is the result of a strategy, not a malady. Of a conspiracy? A vengeful wife? Or is she just what she seems: a mental patient weighed down by an unstoppable insanity? As Theo picks up That “someone” could have been anyone or maybe it was just a psychosis that lead to paranoia, murder, and then silence. Slowly, as Theo works through his own difficulties, a journal reveals what happened to Alicia, leading up to the days of the murder: her creepy friend, her abusive family, her husband’s lecherous buddy, and her encroaching certainty that someone was following, was watching. It begins with Theo, a man so besotted with this infamous patient that he leaves a steady career to join the ill-fated Grove. The Silent Patient is a story that is part murder, part obsession. Theo is betting his career on making a breakthrough with Alicia, and as his own personal life devolves, his silent patient beckons with the hint of a confidence, the slow unraveling of a long cherished lie. Her only testament is a creepy, surrealistic picture that Theo Faber, the new psychotherapist, is convinced holds the clue to both the brutal murder and Alicia’s silence.
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Now, she’s a silent patient at The Grove where a team of psychotherapists have worked for many years to find out why she shot her husband and why she hasn’t spoken since. Rating: Fun, but Ultimately Just Another ThrillerĪlicia Berenson was an up-and-coming artist.