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stinkybarnacles 's review for:
The Silent Patient
by Alex Michaelides
fast-paced
What a fantastic waste of time.
God, I loved this book. I loved it so much while I was reading it. I was fascinated by it. It was every bit as captivating as everyone said. I loved Theo, and his delusional, codependent, projecting relationship with Alicia. I was mostly fascinated because I expected that he was being manipulated by her, but also that he was allowing himself to be manipulated because he was genuinely projecting his own feelings onto her so heavily that he could do nothing but sympathize with her. I couldn't wait to get to how the murder took place, what pushed Alicia to do what she did or if she was framed, as she set up with her diary and story.
Unfortunately, I was hoping that Theo would end up mirroring Alicia. I thought he'd end up killing his wife, or killing her lover in a similar way to the way Alicia killed her husband. When I got to the ending and discovered he wasn't an unreliable narrator, but a blatantly lying one, I was just insulted. I know some people love a book like that, but I absolutely hate it. It's really not for me. Why invest all this time into reading a novel, just to discover the narrator lied to you the entire time? I thought, when Theo accused Christian so thoroughly, that he was again projecting his own trauma onto other people. He made Christian a villain from the start, even though he really didn't do anything worse than being arrogant and a douchebag. So I thought maybe Theo was delusional, looking for someone to blame but it was all in his head. Or even that the professor had something to do with it from the start. To get to the end of the book and have this sudden final admission from Alicia on what she thought was her deathbed (which I was hoping was a forgery or another manipulation by her, proving she was sicker than the reader—and Theo—thought she was), and then Theo's half-assed exposition and internal admission of guilt just made me feel like I wasted my time reading this. To me, this wasn't some amazing plot twist. In fact, to me, an incredible plot twist would've been that Alicia was as malicious and psychotic as the media and the other doctors thought she was, and Theo sympathized with her enough to follow in her footsteps without even realizing he was doing it. But turning around and having Theo say "oh by the way, all the motivations I told you for why I was interested in this case was a lie, and I had just been keeping things from the audience the entire time" was annoying. I would've preferred if he was just crazy. If the revelation that he had done those things all those years ago was a total shock to him, like he had a psychotic break or a fugue state and Alicia lying about what happened with Gabriel was a trigger in him remembering why he had such a draw toward her in the first place.
To put it simply, I was unsatisfied. I understand that other people definitely love that Theo had just been manipulating the reader and lying from the start. I have no doubt that that's exciting and different and likely came as a huge shock to most readers. But it fell so flat to me and made the journey the book brought me on feel like a waste of time. He went through all these efforts to "solve the mystery" but he knew all along, so reading page upon page of his detective work is now a waste because this book could've been one page for me. Purely in my experience, I would've liked this better as a short story than a massive time sink.
That being said, I was completely drawn in up until the reveal. I was totally captivated by this book. I thought the characterization of Theo was fantastic, and it was so difficult to know who to trust and who not to. This was geniusly written, because he seemed to not trust every man he met, based on instinct alone. I thought that was masterfully crafted, as a person who understood Theo's mentality early on in the book. I did recognize him as unreliable immediately, but I thought it was because he was more severely mentally ill and unrecovered than he understood. If the book had ended differently, or if the book had the same ending with some tweaks to the delivery in the final chapters, I would've easily given it five stars. But, purely for my own tastes and not the overall merit of the thing, I felt betrayed not by Theo as a character (which I know is the intention), but the actual story being told.
ps. This is the longest book review I've maybe ever written. That goes to show how much I loved this book and how passionately I felt about it, so this isn't a scornful review as a whole. Just a personal lack of satisfaction.
God, I loved this book. I loved it so much while I was reading it. I was fascinated by it. It was every bit as captivating as everyone said. I loved Theo, and his delusional, codependent, projecting relationship with Alicia. I was mostly fascinated because I expected that he was being manipulated by her, but also that he was allowing himself to be manipulated because he was genuinely projecting his own feelings onto her so heavily that he could do nothing but sympathize with her. I couldn't wait to get to how the murder took place, what pushed Alicia to do what she did or if she was framed, as she set up with her diary and story.
Unfortunately, I was hoping that Theo would end up mirroring Alicia. I thought he'd end up killing his wife, or killing her lover in a similar way to the way Alicia killed her husband. When I got to the ending and discovered he wasn't an unreliable narrator, but a blatantly lying one, I was just insulted. I know some people love a book like that, but I absolutely hate it. It's really not for me. Why invest all this time into reading a novel, just to discover the narrator lied to you the entire time? I thought, when Theo accused Christian so thoroughly, that he was again projecting his own trauma onto other people. He made Christian a villain from the start, even though he really didn't do anything worse than being arrogant and a douchebag. So I thought maybe Theo was delusional, looking for someone to blame but it was all in his head. Or even that the professor had something to do with it from the start. To get to the end of the book and have this sudden final admission from Alicia on what she thought was her deathbed (which I was hoping was a forgery or another manipulation by her, proving she was sicker than the reader—and Theo—thought she was), and then Theo's half-assed exposition and internal admission of guilt just made me feel like I wasted my time reading this. To me, this wasn't some amazing plot twist. In fact, to me, an incredible plot twist would've been that Alicia was as malicious and psychotic as the media and the other doctors thought she was, and Theo sympathized with her enough to follow in her footsteps without even realizing he was doing it. But turning around and having Theo say "oh by the way, all the motivations I told you for why I was interested in this case was a lie, and I had just been keeping things from the audience the entire time" was annoying. I would've preferred if he was just crazy. If the revelation that he had done those things all those years ago was a total shock to him, like he had a psychotic break or a fugue state and Alicia lying about what happened with Gabriel was a trigger in him remembering why he had such a draw toward her in the first place.
To put it simply, I was unsatisfied. I understand that other people definitely love that Theo had just been manipulating the reader and lying from the start. I have no doubt that that's exciting and different and likely came as a huge shock to most readers. But it fell so flat to me and made the journey the book brought me on feel like a waste of time. He went through all these efforts to "solve the mystery" but he knew all along, so reading page upon page of his detective work is now a waste because this book could've been one page for me. Purely in my experience, I would've liked this better as a short story than a massive time sink.
That being said, I was completely drawn in up until the reveal. I was totally captivated by this book. I thought the characterization of Theo was fantastic, and it was so difficult to know who to trust and who not to. This was geniusly written, because he seemed to not trust every man he met, based on instinct alone. I thought that was masterfully crafted, as a person who understood Theo's mentality early on in the book. I did recognize him as unreliable immediately, but I thought it was because he was more severely mentally ill and unrecovered than he understood. If the book had ended differently, or if the book had the same ending with some tweaks to the delivery in the final chapters, I would've easily given it five stars. But, purely for my own tastes and not the overall merit of the thing, I felt betrayed not by Theo as a character (which I know is the intention), but the actual story being told.
ps. This is the longest book review I've maybe ever written. That goes to show how much I loved this book and how passionately I felt about it, so this isn't a scornful review as a whole. Just a personal lack of satisfaction.