The Silent Patient
She shot her husband five times and has not spoken since. A therapist becomes obsessed with unlocking her silence. The twist will genuinely catch you.
Alicia's Silence
Alex Michaelides's 2019 debut thriller follows criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber, who has spent years obsessed with the case of Alicia Berenson, a famous painter who shot her husband five times and then stopped speaking entirely. When Theo manages to transfer to the secure psychiatric unit where Alicia is held, he begins using their sessions to try to break through her silence and find the truth. The novel is also told through Alicia's diary, written in the weeks before the murder. Michaelides structures the thriller around a revelation in the final pages that recontextualises everything preceding it.
Reading The Silent Patient
Obsession
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Part
"We are all, in one way or another, trying to return to the safety of the womb.
"Alex Michaelides
Michaelides spent six years writing the novel. He is Greek-Cypriot and trained as a psychotherapist before becoming a writer, which gives the novel's clinical scenes an authenticity that reviewers consistently noted.
The novel was sold at auction before publication for a seven-figure advance, one of the largest ever for a debut thriller. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for months.