The Silent Patient tells the story of Theo, a psychotherapist, who treats a patient accussed of killing her husband, Gabriel. As the title tells, the patient, Alicia, is silent. Theo wants to help Alicia to speak again.
Theo narrates the story in first person. Normally, I love when an author tells a mystery using first person. You get to solve the mystery along with the narrator, matching wits with them as they reveal the clues. However, that didn’t work for me in this story for several reasons.
First, from the get go, I didn’t like Theo. He felt off to me. I didn’t appreciate a psychotherapist seeking out a famous patient, it felt wrong, among other things. My dislike of Theo almost landed this book in my DNF (did not finish) pile.
Second, in addition to Theo’s point of view. Alicia shared her story with us via a journal to which Theo did not have access. It gave me “an edge.” It also made me empathise more with Alicia than Theo. I had to fight my inclination to read the last chapter to make sure all works out for Alicia.
Now we’re getting into major spoiler territory here. It’s a hard book to discuss without giving things away, so…
I kept noticing things. There’s an adage something like, “Don’t put a gun on the mantle in the first act if you don’t use it by the third act.” Basically, everything mentioned should have a reason, a point. In this story, for me, it’s the weather.
Theo and Alicia both hammer home information about the weather. For Alicia, we spend an unbearable heat wave with her. For Theo, it was desolate winter weather, with much talk of snow. Yet, at times, the weather doesn’t match the storyline or isn’t mentioned at all. Why harp on the weather so much at some points, and completely ignore it at others?
At first, I thought editing issues, timeline incongruities. For example, there’s a point where Diomedes mentions it looks as if it will snow tonight. Theo disagrees. It’s thirty pages later and what seems like many days before Theo tells us Diomedes was wrong. It rained. But here’s the thing, that night after the snow discussion, Theo follows Kathy, his wife, on what he assumes to be a clanedestine meeting with her lover. Yet no mentioned of snow or rain as he’s tailing her outside.
This incongruity bothered me likea splinter in the brain. Something felt off with Theo’s telling.
Other incongruities occurred too. For example, in one chapter someone knocks Theo out with a baseball bat to the head. It’s a major blow. The next chapter, when he’s at home with Kathy, no mention. It’s as if the blow never happened.
Next, there felt like a weird parallel between Gabriel’s behavor and Kathy’s. There was a lot of gas lighting going on. Late nights at work. Sneaking. Why would our two protaganists have spouses that acted similarly?
I just knew the “twist” was coming. But what was it? Was Theo really a patient along with Alicia? Could Alicia be a figment of Theo’s imagination? Was Theo a figment of Alicia’s?
Eventually Alicia talks. She tells her story. And the intersections between Alicia’s story and Theo’s become more apparent, especially at the point where Theo follows Kathy’s lover home and resolves to warn or speak to the lover’s wife.
Then it hits me, The Murder of Roger Akroyd! My spidey senses tingled with Theo because the author made Theo an unreliable narrator. He’s telling us his story but not in an accurate way. He tries to make himself sound sympathetic but he is not. Eventually, all is revealed. And I feel better about my dislike of Theo; I am justified.
It’s funny, as I read the book, I thought to myself, this is a maybe a three star. The story is fine, there are plenty of red herrings and enough mystery but I just don’t like the characters. Having finished it though, and reflecting upon it as I write this, I realize I am wrong, It’s a solid four star for me.