The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, (5/5).

The Silent Patient is a novel written by Alex Michaelides in 2019. The novel is about a famous painter, Alicia Bereneson and psychology therapist, Theo Faber. Alicia was found at a crime scene infront of her husband, Gabriel Bereneson, dead body with a bullet to the head and crimson red blood splattered against dove white walls. Alicia refuses to talk to any living organism and is sent to a psychiatric facility, the Grove, where she refuses to talk in the span of four years. Until she meets a man named Theo Faber who is captivated by her motives for remaining muted. The Silent Patient uses the allusions of Greek mythology to reveal Alicia's Benedenson selective disorder in one her paintings called Alcestis. Alcestis is a Greek Goddess who was sold to Hades for her children's safety, but she refused to talk to Hades until Hercules arrived to save her from the underworld where she was able to talk again after years. After months of Theo visiting his patient, Alicia starts to open up and shares her diary with him. A journal entry from August eleventh, “I saw the man again. He was a bit farther away this time. He was sitting on a bench farther into the park. But it was him, I could tell.” (Michaelides 210). Days, weeks, and months had gone by and there was a man who would silently sit in the park near the Bernesons house and blankly stare into the window at night with a mask, sun glasses, and hat. Alicia begins to feel paranoid and lets her anxious thoughts take over. Alicia phoned her husband Gabriel and told him the whole story about the creepy man sitting outside, but her husband quickly tells her that she is imagining everything and how there is no man sitting outside. Gabriel sends Alicia to a therapist who also does not believe her situation about the man outside her house. Filled with anger Alicia wrote that she decided to not open up to her husband or neighbors anymore and instead writes in her diary that she hides from her husband since it reveals that she has been skipping her medication pills and he would feel betrayed and hurt. Alicia's backstory shows the consequences of not being taken seriously when one is put on medications and refuses to share their obsessive thoughts to loved ones. Moreover, on August twenty-fifth, Theo reads the last sentence in her diary, “Oh my god- I can hear him- He’s inside. He’s inside the house.” (Michaelides 224). Theo closes the book and begins asking questions knowing that she is unable to talk, but atlas Alicia finally talks bringing Theo into tears of happiness. Alicia's shares the story of her husband's death and how his helpless dead body on the floor made her stunned to talk which is why she remains muted. Overall, The Silent Patient was a novel filled with all sorts of surprises, mysterious, and psychology thriller events. The message to the audience was somewhat unclear when I first read the book, but now that I've read again it was more visible about what Alex Michaelidies was trying to convey. In all defense the novel is a little challenging to read if you lack knowledge with deep connections towards emotions where it uses psychological terms and goes into deep explanations about heavy topics which can also be sensitive towards some readers. When reading this book I suggest to google questions for each chapter to answer with text connections and literary devices in order to have a more emotional connection with the book and to view the backstories of particular characters' views on the protagonist. The Silent Patient reminds me of a novel by Stephen King called The Window that talks about a girl named Jean who is a victim and a wife of a man who committed horrendous crimes. Then she becomes windowed out of nowhere and free to share her story. These two novels are compared together because they both share the same shocking plot twist about how people or things are not how they are not always perceived as everyone says they are. On the other hand I believed this book was a masterpiece and exciting to read and would most definitely recommend it for people who seek for thriller and psychology genres.