Book Report

The Silent Patient

Made by:
Michelle Andjani Widiputri Prasadja XBAH/22
 Today, I want to talk about a book written by Alex
Michaelides called ‘The Silent Patient.’ This book was
published in 2019, to be exact February 5th of 2019. The
Silent Patient was published by Celadon Books, a division
of Macmillan Publishers that is based in New York. This
book offers a thrill and mysterious plot within its 325
pages.
The Silent Patient talks about a 33 years old famous
painter, Alicia Berenson, that is married to an in-demand
fashion photographer, Gabriel Berenson. She lives in a big
house with a view overlooking one of London’s most
beautiful areas. One evening, Alicia was found with cuts on
her arms, a gun near her - dropped on the ground - and her
husbands’ body tied to a chair with five gunshot wounds
on his face. After the tragedy, Alicia never speaks another
word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk made a simple tragedy into something much bigger, a mystery
that captures the publics imagination. While all that, the judge decide to hide Alicia away
from the public at the Grove, a mental institution in North London. After knowing that the
judge has decided to put Alicia in a mental institution without the punishment of jail even
after recovery, the public thought that she would sweet talk her way out of the institution.
But even after 6 years in the institution, Alicia didn’t speak a word.
This story is mostly told by Theo Faber, a psychotherapist that has been handling
Alicia. Theo has read all the news about Alicia’s case, and he was beyond intrigued in this
specific case. After waiting for a long time, he finally gets to have the opportunity to work
with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and reveal the mystery of her husbands’
murder takes Theo down a twisting path into a search for the truth that threatens to
consume him.
Now continuing with my opinions on this book. Starting with the good things. This
book was engaging since the start due the interesting plot. The ending is very surprising
and well written, even if you guess the twist, also the way crucial scenes of the book play
out is well done. At first, I was kind of skeptical of the book coming together, and I was very
happy that it does.
From the other crime/thriller book I have read, the ending of those books are very
open ended and I don’t like those much. But this book has a pretty solid ending and I love it.
Overall, the story is very interesting and well-paced. It pretty much reads the ways a thriller
should be read, with many twists and intriguing bits of information at a steady pace.
 Moving on to some criticisms. One thing that stands out the most to me is the
unreliable narrator. Theo is telling the story with no specific timeline, or at least that is what
we realized at the end of the book. It makes the story quite confusing but it also fits the
missing pieces of the story pretty well, so I am not going to complain much about this. The
characters, in my opinion, are sort of silly or cartoonish, for example the motherly female
doctor, the arrogant doctor who gets in the way of the lead characters, and so on. The
author, Michaelides, throws in so many red herrings and false starts – that he didn’t even
give a solution to - that the book begins to feel too exaggerated.
While I liked the ending, a lot of the minor plot “twist” are pretty uninspired and turn
the story into a bit of a jumbled mess than an entertaining mystery. Finally, despite the
steady pace of the book, it takes quite a while to get into the core of the book. There’s a
range of characters to be introduced and a decent chunk of background information to go
over before all the action starts. As a result, it made me go in and out of reading the book
as it was taking long before the main action of the book starts.
Overall, this was a good book that I would definitely read again and recommend to
my friends and family. Especially to people who are very interested in crime and thriller
books. The Silent Patient really nails the ending, and the main plot twist is what really made
this book worth it.