The Silent Patient

“I’m only going to write positive, happy, normal thoughts,” swears Alicia Berenson, like an oath. “No crazy thoughts allowed.”

You flip the page, on to Chapter 1, to be immediately thrust into present day, six years after her first diary entry: “Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband.”

And then: it’s 3AM, you’re on the last chapter, you’re buzzing with goosebumps, you’re contemplating calling in sick the next day so you can start over from the beginning and do it all over again, livid because you went 323 pages and never saw it coming.

Six years after she murdered her husband and Alicia Berenson hasn’t uttered a single word. “She remained silent when she was placed under arrest, refusing to deny her guilt or confess it.” With plans to heal Alicia, Theo Faber acquires the job of psychotherapist at The Grove—a secure psychiatric facility where Alicia was placed upon killing her husband, shooting him in the face and “leaving a charred, blackened, bloody mess.” Its redbrick Victorian building lay at the center of Edgware hospital, layers of dust and strings of cobwebs making it feel like the last beat of a dying heart.

Alex Michaelides shocked millions of readers with his riveting debut novel, The Silent Patient. This mind-bending mystery is told from the perspective of Theo Faber, a psychotherapist with a tragic childhood and an uncured addiction to cigarettes. Theo’s chapters are quick, pithy with prose, like well-executed wit, and punctuated by Alicia’s diary entries—a diary, mind you, with perfectly written dialogue—from the days leading up to her infamous murder. Promising nothing but honesty, it is on those pages where Alicia once recorded her every thought—both the tormented and the passionate—and expressed her undying love for her husband, Gabriel.

Readers, catching their breath between pages, a scream building inside their chest, often find themselves in a comparable state of silence, their jaws dropped, their voices mute, as the story of Theo Faber and Alicia Berenson plays out.

Alicia was a painter, and her husband, Gabriel, a famous fashion photographer. “He had a distinct style,” according to Theo, “shooting semi-starved, semi-naked women in strange, unflattering angles.” As for Alicia, her paintings were often obscure, thought-provoking, and at times, disturbing. At first glance, you might assume that the man she had painted on the cross was Jesus, but only after a closer look will you realize that the man looks nothing like Jesus—“whatever He looked like”—but was, in fact, her own husband, thorns spiking, blood dripping, crucified.

A writer myself, I often obsess over an author’s ability to captivate the mind with their use of language, to manipulate words into masterful sentences with the precision of a surgeon—a deft, and somewhat magical, talent. From page one of The Silent Patient it is clear that Alex Michaelides had birthed Alicia Berenson’s character from a genepool of his own artistic capabilities; for the same words he used to portray Alicia’s artwork could equally describe his own wordsmith-talents: “an uncanny ability to grab your attention—by the throat, almost—and hold it in a viselike grip.”

By nature, I am a visual person. My mind is far too hyperactive for audiobooks. I am forever distracted by the loud minutia of everyday life, and therefore, need to see what I am expected to learn or digest mentally. But for those of you who were born with the quiver of skills required to successfully listen to an audiobook—and actually follow the plot at hand—I highly recommend adding this one to your list. Jack Hawkins (Theo Faber) and Louise Brealey (Alicia Berenson) perfectly execute their characters, bringing them to life in a way I had never before experienced.

Theo Faber draws you into his therapy sessions with Alicia Berenson as he patiently pries his way into her mind, hoping to uncover an answer to the question everyone is asking: Why does she not speak?

– Trevor is a writer for EllisDownHome.com. Outside of writing and freelance, or bingeing some new HBO miniseries, Trevor is an avid runner, a disciplined workout partner, and a viciously competitive Spikeball player.

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