Dr. Appu Sasidharan (Dasfill)'s Reviews > The Silent Patient

(Throwback review) Isn't it strange that we immensely love and hate a book at the same time? Many of you might have had such an experience at least once in your lifetime. Well, this book was the one which gave me that feeling.

First of all, let me start with what I liked in this book. The writing style of the author is suited for writing a thriller like this. He succeeded in making me glued to the book even after the glaring innuendos that were disparaging to the core kept me exasperated. He worked out the plot twist well. This might be the reason why almost every friend of mine in Goodreads love this book. I must confess now itself that if I was not a Doctor and I didn't know how the healthcare system works, I would also have given this book four or five stars.

This is a book which won the best book in the thriller section in Goodreads award last year. If you are promoting a book as a psychological thriller, there are two things which the author should be careful about. One is to get the thriller aspect correct, which the author had succeeded, and the second is to get the Psychological aspect right, which is where the aberration lies here.

The author had unabashedly mentioned some things about Psychotherapy in which some are true in some rare cases while some have unfortunately gone entirely wrong. The author has no right to generalise about the health sector as a whole based on some scrupulous activities done by some individuals. You can't even see such a shady Psychiatric institution in any dystopian world. Mr Michaelides, who is a Cambridge product, had an excellent opportunity to produce one of the best thrillers. Unfortunately, he didn't do the adequate research in the psychological aspects needed for this book.

There are many mistakes regarding psychotherapy, treatment methods, various disorders, therapy sessions, medical ethics in this book. Initially, Theo, who happens to be a psychotherapist, is strangely saying that his father had a personality disorder which he is mentioning as an illness that went untreated for the duration of his life, which is, in fact, rather absurd. There is no definitive treatment or drug for the management of personality disorders. The only way in which we can manage it is by behavioural modification therapies like the DBT (Dialectical behavioural therapy) and CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy). I am sharing four pictures here for my friends who are utterly perplexed due to being thrown into the crazy world of complicated medical jargon by the author in this novel bolt out of the blue.





The author should have done more research on topics like the transference, countertransference, Borderline personality disorder, Narcissistic personality disorder before writing this book.





I remember having an entrancing discussion about this book with one of my friends who is a Psychiatrist in D.C. We concluded that we should not be pedantic about it and leave it alone as just another painfully didactic fiction which came in the disguise of a psychological thriller.

It is poignant to see Entertainment Weekly calling it "an unforgettable — and Hollywood-bound — new thriller" with "a mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." I heard that the silver screen version of this book is in the pipeline. I humbly request Mr Michaelides, who also happens to be a screenwriter to correct all the flaws in the novel in the upcoming movie.

I had the expectations of being enraptured by this book before reading it. But unfortunately, I abhorred this book to such an extent that I curtailed from reading other thrillers for some time. All the other thrillers I might read after this one will be desultory attempts. I am sure that I will recover from this one. I am sad that Alex Michaelides missed a golden opportunity to create a masterpiece.