Sunday theme |Mystery

The Silent Patient was an intriguing psychological thriller with amazing twists in the plot leaving your inner Sherlock flabbergasted. Alicia Berenson is a well known painter who shot her husband five times in a row and never spoke a word again. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who is convinced he can make Alicia speak again. The novel was a bit slow-paced but that was its biggest quality. It allowed the reader to absorb each and every thing, take in each and every word, savor it. It allowed to the readers to take their time, evaluate all the facts within all the paragrapghs and then move forth. It allows you to undersrand Theo, not just from his profession as a therapist but on a deeper level so you can connet to him even if you cannot relate to him at all. It tells how having gone through years of therapy himself and becoming a therapist, he's still unable to let go of the haunts of his past, while making the reader realise that it's okay to feel sick after taking the medicines because You suffered through a disease. It allowed you to relate to Alicia through her diary, that how isolated and cornered a person can feel if they have truly no one to listen to them or understand them but then it equally makes you feel distant from ger real character, keeping you in constant doubt about her intentions. And I swear, that was what kept me hooked on until the end. More than to know the end of the story, I found myself interesting in exploring the mind of a fictional character, just to know exactly what goes on inside of it.
It helps to know that the author is actually a screenwriter and gives you a better perspective on how the book is arranged like a montage rather than a linear timeline. A lot of angles have been explored here, psychotherapy, art, literature and in my opinion has been brought together very smoothly and in unexpected ways.