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In her diary entry, we get a glimpse of her personality-- she's a 33 year old married artist, painter to be exact, that had an "uncanny ability to grab your attention—by the throat, almost—and hold it in a viselike grip". Her mother took her own life by crashing their car against a wall while Alicia and her were both inside when she was only 10.

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"Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg."

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The book starts off with Alicia Berenson's diary entry, which she apparently wrote just to show her husband that "everything was okay".

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Apparently, Alicia shot her husband in the face 5 times on a Friday at 11:30 pm before she attempted to take her own life afterwards, a mission she wasn't able to complete successfully. After the incident, she never spoke again, spending 6 years in complete silence while expressing her emotions on canvases.

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Alicia's husband, a 44-year old photographer who shot "shallow" pictures of high end models at weird angles for worldwide-renowned magazines.

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The only word written on Alicia's self portrait painted hours after arriving at the hospital following her husband's murder. I want to know how the myth of this greek heroine relates to her story.

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The story's 42 year old main character and narrator. A psychotherapist who's "used to working with some of the most damaged, vulnerable members of society", he felt a deep connection with Alicia and was convinced he could "fix her". He wanted to help her speak again so she could tell people her story.

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"Somehow grasping at vanishing snowflakes is like grasping at happiness: an act of possession that instantly gives way to nothing."

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At the start of each chapter there is a quote by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis driven by the exploration of our subconscious. Because Theo is a psychotherapist and the book centers around a damaged woman who is in dire need of help, I think the quotes are very thought-provoking and tie up the main theme of each chapter.

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"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways."

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Will Theo be able to convince Christian to lower Alice's medication? And how long will it take for him to bring out at least a few words from her?

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The mental facility where she's being held has her heavily medicated, so Theo asked to lower her medication in order to speak to her. This didn't work in his favor, though, as she attacked him and almost choked him to death.

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Before Theo got attacked by Alicia, he said the expression in her eyes wasn't sadness or anger, but he couldn't finish figuring it out because she jumped on him. Nevertheless, I believe that she was irradiating fear; her husband must have done something to her that changed her perspective on men and makes her feel unsafe around them.

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"Her silence was like a mirror— reflecting yourself back at you. And it was often an ugly sight."

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One night, when Theo was home and Kathy was out working, he discovers that she's having an affair, which completely breaks him. He plans on finding out who this person is.

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Theo reads Alcestis, the greek myth about a woman that dies so her husband can live but is brought back from the dead only to stay in complete silence for the rest of her life. Alicia, clearly, is embodying this story, but why? What did Gabriel do to her that made her not want to speak again?

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Theo Faber's wife. Joyous, radiant, brave, and outgoing, she was Theo's opposite, this being precisely what brought them together. Theo believes she "saved him", bringing light into his dark life and making him change the way he sees the world.

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In one of the therapy sessions, Alicia gives Theo her diary, which reveals she was being stalked by someone a few days before the murder took place. However, she was too scared to do anything about it, so she dismissed it.

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Correlating the fact that Alicia was being stalked and watched a few days before the murder and the myth of Alcestis, I believe that maybe the stalker broke into their home and forced Alicia to choose between killing her husband or killing herself, and Alicia chose to live. Maybe what's consuming her is not fear, but guilt.

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Theo was talking to Alicia's cousin when he revealed that her father had said, loudly enough for her to hear, that he wished Alicia had died instead of her mother in the car crash that took her life. Theo realizes that this is Alicia's "psychological death", the missing piece of the case.

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The stalker's identity being revealed to be Theo was a shocking twist; I believed that his story of looking for his wife's lover was happening simultaneously to the incidents in The Grove, not 6 years prior. However, this revelation helps understand Theo's ulterior motives of wanting to treat Alicia.

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Alicia opens up about the night of the murder, saying how one night her stalker broke into their house and tied her up, doing the same with Gabriel when he arrived. She says the stalker shot Gabriel 6 times and then left, but Theo knows that Gabriel was shot only 5 times.

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Theo comes back to The Grove to confront Alicia about the inconsistencies, only to find that Alicia is in a coma due to being administered a lethal dose of morphine. The police suspects it was one of Alicia's doctors, but it was, in fact, Theo.

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The narrative of Kathy's infidelity isn't placed in the present, but rather 6 years ago; and the man she was having an affair with was Gabriel. Theo was Alicia's stalker, and he was planning to kill Gabriel that night when he spotted Alicia in the house.

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I believe that now with the truth being out to the reader, Alicia is going to be able to wake up from her coma and tell the police about Theo, getting him arrested.

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In Alicia's last diary entry, she confesses she suspected that Theo was her stalker all along. On the night of the murder, she narrates, Theo offered Gabriel a choice: kill himself or kill his wife.

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When Gabriel chose to live, he triggered Alicia's trauma about her father wanting her to die instead of her mother. Theo fires a shot in the air and leaves without the gun, not hurting anyone. But Alicia, hurt by Gabriel's words, shoots him.

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Theo doesn't know this last diary entry with his identity being revealed exists, so he quits his job at The Grove and moves back to his hometown. One day, the police show up to his house with Alicia's diary in hand, and he knows that he was going to pay the price for what he did.

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"This whole mythology of us that I had built up, our hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, our plans for the future; a life that had seemed so secure, so sturdy, now collapsed in seconds—like a house of cards in a gust of wind. "

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“I don’t want to die,” he said. Then there was silence. Everything stopped. Inside my body, every cell deflated; wilting cells, like dead petals falling from a flower. Jasmine flowers floating to the ground.

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The Silent Patient was written by Alex Michaelides, and was published on February 5th, 2019

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"The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive." (Goodreads)

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"As a big fan of psychological thrillers, I was very excited to read this very well acclaimed book due to it's intriguing storyline. At first, I was captivated by the narration of what the public believed was what happened in the Berenson house that night, when Gabriel Berenson was found dead. Then, her self portrait titled Alcestis, like the Greek myth, that depicted her days after the murder, had me hooked and wanting to know more. The start of the story was fairly thought-provoking, inviting the reader to make their hypotheses and theories as to what drove Alicia to become a cold-blooded killer. However, when the main character Theo starts treating Alicia at the facility, the originally riveting plot starts to lose traction. Theo, who's supposed to be a psychiatrist, starts acting like a detective, asking anyone who had contact with Alicia about her as opposed to trying to get her to talk about the incident like a real doctor. These actions start introducing new characters to the story that essentially add no value to the plot, and just seem like filler scenes to try to extend the major event that is Alicia's revelations of what happened that night. In continuation, Theo being revealed as the stalker was shocking, but the way it was presented can be confusing to the reader as the story felt like it was being narrated all in the present day because of correlating events and actions between the 2 timelines. Overall, Alicia's story and its embodiment of Alcestis' myth is thoroughly intriguing and creative, but the way the rest of the plot was developed appeared to be a bit lazy and could've been better structured.

(from: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4481219051)

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** spoiler alert ** As a big fan of psychological thrillers, I was very excited to read this very well acclaimed book due to it's intriguing storyline. At first, I was captivated by the narration of what the public believed was what happened in the Berenson house that night, when Gabriel Berenson was found dead. Then, her self portrait titled Alcestis, like the Greek myth, that depicted her days after the murder, had me hooked and wanting to know more. The start of the story was fairly thought-provoking, inviting the reader to make their hypotheses and theories as to what drove Alicia to become a cold-blooded killer. However, when the main character Theo starts treating Alicia at the facility, the originally riveting plot starts to lose traction. Theo, who's supposed to be a psychiatrist, starts acting like a detective, asking anyone who had contact with Alicia about her as opposed to trying to get her to talk about the incident like a real doctor. These actions start introducing new characters to the story that essentially add no value to the plot, and just seem like filler scenes to try to extend the major event that is Alicia's revelations of what happened that night. In continuation, Theo being revealed as the stalker was shocking, but the way it was presented can be confusing to the reader as the story felt like it was being narrated all in the present day because of correlating events and actions between the 2 timelines. Overall, Alicia's story and its embodiment of Alcestis' myth is thoroughly intriguing and creative, but the way the rest of the plot was developed appeared to be a bit lazy and could've been better structured.

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Juliana Facchini's review of The Silent Patient

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3/5: As a big fan of psychological thrillers, I was very excited to read this very well acclaimed book due to it's intriguing storyline. At first, I was captivated by the narration of what the public believed was what happened in the Berenson house that night, when Gabriel Berenson was found dead.