I’ve been reading a lot lately. And by a lot I mean almost a book every two days (well there isn’t much else to do at the moment is there?) However nothing has really inspired me to write a review. Not until I read The Silent Patient that is. Suddenly my word rate had doubled and my heart rate with it. I sawed through this book in a matter of hours and finished breathless, exhilarated and strangely empty inside.
Alex Michaelides is Greek, you’ll get that because despite the book being set in London everyone is Greek or compared to someone who looks Greek. Also they all seem to know a lot about Greek history and the weather keeps being compared to that in Athens (“at least they have a beach in Athens” being one of my favourite shoe horned lines). Far from a gripe though, this is more of a playful addition that makes you chuckle between the dark pages.
And fuck do they get dark.
It’s going to be tricky not to spoil this one, I do my best in my reviews to avoid giving away too much detail and instead inspire to read but with a book like this where it’s quality revolves around the Twist (with a capital T) that’s going to be hard. Because it’s quite the twist. I’d love to say that I’m one of those people who works out the ‘whodunit’ by the end of the book and can sit smugly as the reveal occurs and then proceed to tell everyone in a 5 mile radius that I got it right, even if in all probability I absolutely did not get it right.
No, instead and probably helped by the fact I didn’t put the book down long enough to give it a think, I let myself be absorbed by the story, not the detective work, and that my friends was a good idea because this story was a ride. As someone with a speckled mental health history I found myself revelling in the intricacies of psycho-analytics when presented with someone (or someones) with real trauma. Our main protagonist Theo is the perfect unreliable narrator, he gives us every reason not to trust him, even highlighting his own traumas as we go through and the reasons why someone with exactly those issues shouldn’t be trusted, yet you can’t help but also feel an intense empathy with him as he strives to cure his patient and struggles with his marriage, throwing everything he has to try and rescue a woman thrown over the edge by the traumas she’s endured.
The author manages to spin this tale where you really don’t trust anyone in the story, the threat is always there, just lurking on the periphery, you know that the penny will drop at some point but where and when is a constant shifting miasma. This book is dark, enthrallingly so and you find yourself analysing each character, every conversation for whether they have any relevance to the various threads that run through the narrative. The sudden clenching together of those threads happens all at once and leaves you breathless, the final few chapters wrenching you into a reality so warped by the events of the book that you can do nothing but reel your way through the last few pages to the finish.
It’s a powerful read, no doubt about it, but if you came looking for a cheery holiday thriller then you’re in entirely the wrong ballpark. This is a book not to enjoy, but more to endure, one to let weigh on you until you finish and indeed after. It’s a story for the story’s sake, to be grappled with, to flex your mind with and to try and test your patience. This is a story to do battle with and the result is all the sweeter for it.