Alicia is an inpatient in a facility for the mentally unfit convicts after being charged with her husband's murder. She hasn't spoken a word since the incident, but for the painting titled Alcestis, which she did a week after the incident. Theo is the new psychotherapist trying to break into her mind and make her talk. The Silent Patient is a debut novel by Alex Michaelides. It follows the stories of Alicia and Theo through the narration of Theo and excerpts from Alicia's journal.
ISBN: 9781250301697
Alicia had been an artist known for some of her photorealistic paintings before she was accused and convicted of the murder of her husband. She was found standing near her dead husband, in shock, and a gun with her fingerprints near her. Her husband had been tied up to a chair with wires, and was shot five times in the face. Alicia's wrists were slit, and she hadn't spoken a word since. One week after the incident, she drew a self-portrait titled Alcestis. Alcestis refers to the central character and the name of an ancient tragedy by Euripides. In the play, Alcestis sacrifices herself in place of her husband, is revived, and stops talking completely despite the reunion. Given her silence, Alicia was not put in prison. Instead, she was admitted to The Grove, an institution for the mentally ill. Theo is a psychotherapist who joined the facility to try and break into Alicia's silence. His relationship with his wife also seems on edge as he suspects infidelity on her part. He tries to investigate and fix both his life and Alicia's as the story proceeds.
The story is narrated by Theo. It tends to mix two storylines, the one of Theo, where he is trying to get Alicia to talk and also reminiscing about his past, and the other storyline that emanates from the journal entries of Alicia. He had an abusive childhood, which, as he discovered, was the case with Alicia as well. Theo often goes beyond the protocols of his profession in trying to get Alicia to speak, even when others in the institution warn him that she's a silent siren. This made me wonder, no matter how hard one may feel the urge to save some stranger, this is beyond normal and seems like there is some vested interest. There's a recurrent theme of wounds from childhood determining the way our present selves behave, and the psychotherapist's role in helping overcome that. Theo relates a lot of incidents to what he endured in the presence of his father while growing up, and contemplates his fate in this context - his choice of partner, her attitudes, his healing journey with his therapist, Ruth, and how he related to Alicia in her circumstances.
I don't know much about how the psychotherapists are supposed to work, but the way the author Alex describes it through Theo feels a little arcane, counter-intuitive, and poignant:
"...And to my surprise, tears would be collecting in her eyes as she listened. This may seem hard to grasp, but those tears were not heres. They were mine. At the ime I didn't understand. But that's how therapy works. A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist: and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and she feels it for him. And the, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him."
But, of course, I am no therapist (and the author trained as one).
Without demarcations, the boundaries between storylines often blur, and it is easy to confuse the past for the present. I suspect that is intentional, the objective being to confuse the reader a bit in a sort of premonition. There are subtle misdirections to throw the diligent readers off the smell. However, it is executed well. The story flows easily and the surprise dawns on me as the storylines merge into the present eventually. The turn of events feels like a lot of it had been a long time coming. Some, not all. Most of the essential pieces were tied together eventually. It reminds me of the lyrics from Chris Issac's song 'Wicked Game': "It's strange what desire will make foolish people do". The work is a light read. It had a good amount of thrill to keep me hooked till the end.
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