We Are All Mad Here's Reviews > The Silent Patient

Sadly I have read Fifty Shades of Grey, so I cannot call The Silent Patient the absolute worst book ever. Instead I'll just call it awful, truly and in all ways, from its portrayal of mental illness, to its utter lack of believability, to its stupid, stupid, stupid characters. One of whom gets an eyeball gouged out and I almost feel like doing the same to myself for having read this thing from start to stupid finish.

The story takes place in a mental institution, where most of the psychiatric professionals are presumably tweens and teens. Patients are permitted to wander at will carrying items such as broken cue sticks, which I would think might be a bit jagged and sharp and therefore potentially quite dangerous, but, what do I know. Theo, the main character-slash-psychotherapist, gets a job at this facility and on his very first day he decides which patient he'd like to treat. He is not only permitted to treat his choice of patient -- he is also, conveniently, given no other duties aside from trying to get this SILENT PATIENT to speak. I feel like he should have at least had some paperwork, some standard mandatory training modules, something. But no.

Anyway, the SILENT PATIENT has been silent for years, ever since murdering her husband, but no one else bothers with her anymore because most of the rest of the staff think she's a "bitch." Theo, in a true flash of psychiatric brilliance, wonders if perhaps her aggressively drugged stupor is preventing her from talking. Really it's a wonder none of the other doctors thought of this. In any case, his boss naturally agrees to reduce the dosage of her medication right away. I am sure that in real mental health facilities this is exactly how it goes.

At one point, Theo discovers that one of the staff has been selling opoids to patients. His immediate thought: "I wondered what else he was up to—perhaps I had been a little too hasty to defend him so determinedly to Stephanie. I’d better keep an eye on him." YES, Theo, definitely KEEP AN EYE ON HIM. Jesus.

In the meantime, Theo decides to harass his patient's family and friends to see if they might provide clues as to why she won't talk. There is a dramatic scene in which a cousin takes Theo up onto a roof. For no reason. "This is where we were when we heard her father say the thing he said to make her crazy for the rest of her life," or some such nonsense. AHA, it's all coming together now!

As to why Alicia, the patient, won't talk? (view spoiler)[Well, she'd just been held captive by a masked man for hours, and when her husband arrived home he suggested that the masked man kill her instead of him, most likely because he didn't realize he was in a novel and that such husbands in modern fiction do stand a good chance of being murdered by their fictional wives. For whatever reason, at that point the masked man decided he'd had enough for one day and left, killing neither of the two. And then Alicia, presumably perturbed at her husband's less-than-chivalrous behavior, shot him five times in the face. And apparently after all that, she simply had nothing to say. (hide spoiler)] That is really the reason.

*Thanks universe that this was a library book and not an actual purchase*