The Silent Patient

About this book

Alicia Berenson, a painter, murders her husband of seven years, Gabriel Berenson. She neither denies her guilt nor provides an explanation for the murder. In fact, she is either unable or unwilling to speak at all. Detained at home prior before going to trial, she makes her only statement about the murder in the form of a painting, which she titles Alcestis, after an ancient Greek play. Among the fascinated crowds who visit the gallery to see the painting firsthand is Theo Faber, a professional psychotherapist and the primary narrator of the novel. He is both professionally and personally intrigued by Alicia’s ongoing silence. Theo’s interest in psychotherapy stems from his own struggles with mental health. Raised by an abusive father, Theo credits his former psychiatrist Ruth with helping him to recover from suicidal depression. As the story develops, Theo reveals more about his own personal life, including his relationship to his wife, Kathy, an American stage-actress whose buoyant personality gives Theo his first taste of real happiness. After finding suspicious messages on her laptop, however, he begins following Kathy hoping to catch her in an affair. At trial, Alicia is declared not guilty by means of diminished responsibility. Years later, Alicia has continued to maintain her silence despite the best efforts of the staff at The Grove, the psychiatric ward where Alicia has been institutionalized since the trial. Theo remains fascinated by Alicia, and he applies to work at The Grove to uncover the cause of her silence. At the Grove, Theo meets Diomedes, who runs the Psychiatry unit; Indira, a friendly therapist; Yuri, an easygoing nurse; Stephanie, the stern manager of the Grove; Rowena, an art therapist; and Christian, with whom Theo does not get along. Theo also meets the patients at The Grove, including Alicia, who has not responded to treatment and remains heavily medicated. Hoping to break through to Alicia, Theo feels that he must better understand her life in order to discover the source of her trauma. He requests interviews with those who knew Alicia before the murder, including Jean-Felix, whose gallery represented Alicia’s art. Theo also meets Alicia’s brother-in-law, Max Berenson, who claims that Alicia had been seeing a therapist unofficially at Gabriel’s insistence. During a visit to Alicia’s family home, Theo learns a good deal about Alicia’s unhappy childhood from her cousin, Paul, and her unpleasant aunt, Lydia. In Alicia’s diary entries, written prior to Gabriel’s murder, she reflects upon the death of her mother in a car accident that she feels was in fact a deliberate and suicidal act. She also writes about her passionate feelings of love for her husband and her hatred of Max, who has attempted to kiss and touch her inappropriately on several occasions. In the present day, Max calls in a complaint to The Grove regarding Theo’s behavior, and Diomedes agrees that Theo has transgressed professional boundaries. Despite orders to stop contacting Alicia’s friends and family, Theo meets again with Jean-Felix, who recommends that Theo read Alcestis by Euripides. In the play, a woman offers to sacrifice herself in place of her husband, who is all-too willing to accept her sacrificeAt The Grove, Theo has some breakthroughs with Alicia, who at first responds well to his attempts to engage her in art therapy before attacking him without warning. He is encouraged by this response, as it shows that she is in some way expressing her feelings, though Theo’s treatment of Alicia is abruptly cut short when she brutally attacks another patient. Before the hospital staff sedate her, she surprises Theo by giving him her diary. In it, he reads that Alicia was being stalked in the days before Gabriel’s murder.