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Loading... La pacient silenciosa (edition 2019)by Alex Michaelides (Author), Anna Puente i Llucià (Translator)
Work InformationThe Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This was a fun book! I am not generally caught off-guard by a plot twist or surprise ending, but The Silent Patient surprised me. I found it odd that some people really did not appreciate the book for what it was; others, like me, raved about it. I sit in the latter camp. Every person has a breaking point, and every relationship is only as true as it is behind closed doors - what you see on the outside may not be what is really happening on the inside. If you enjoy a good psychological thriller, give The Silent Patient a go; it’s worth your time. Jeez crumpets, what a miserable collection of flat, awful characters this was. No one was likeable or compelling. I call bullshit on a lot of the "psychotherapy" that happens here, and especially on the attitudes of the doctors and the way the ward is run. (Is this because of the unreliable narrator? Maybe? Who cares?) The story tripped along, but I never felt terribly engaged or particularly confident that I was going to be happy I stuck around to see how it came out. The twist made me go "Wait. Huh? Oh. I guess?" It felt tricksy and cheatsy instead of well-crafted. I felt like the author was being manipulative rather than performing excellent misdirection. What I *thought* was going on was a lot more compelling to me (and less outright twisty) than what really was. And even though I felt cheated by the twist, I'm not even particularly annoyed? It doesn't even rise to that. I shrugged at the thing generally, I shrugged at the twist, and now I shrug at the manipulation. For book club, or I probably would have stopped bothering about halfway through. How do you make a best-selling novel out of a story in which the main character, other than the narrator, remains silent? Alex Michaelides found a way in “The Silent Patient” (2019). Alicia Berenson, a gifted artist, is arrested for murdering her husband by shooting him in the face while he was tied to a chair. Questions remain, like how did she manage to tie him to the chair before shooting him? But she refuses to answer them or to say anything at all. For years. Theo Faber is a 42-year-old psychotherapist determined to find answers, if not from Alicia then from others who knew her before the killing. Thus the novel becomes part psychological thriller and part murder mystery. Theo has personal problems of his own. He discovers that his beautiful wife is secretly meeting with another man. Rather than confronting her, he follows her, as well as the man she is having the affair with. He contemplates murder. Here the otherwise original novel becomes cliche — the psychotherapist may be as crazy as the patient. Things begin to come into focus when a silent Alicia hands Theo her secret diary, and at last she begins to speak. But Michaelides holds the final surprises for the exciting climax. This is a nearly first-rate novel that deserves its best-selling status.
Meet the hottest-tipped debut novelists of 2019 The Silent Patient is narrated by Theo Faber, a psychotherapist determined to discover why Alicia Berenson, a famous artist accused of murdering her husband, has refused to speak since her husband’s death. The therapeutic setting was inspired by Michaelides’s own experience. “Therapy is very important to me and has been a major part of my life,” he says. Running through the novel is the Greek myth of Alcestis, and Euripides’s play of the same name. The Alcestis theme is perhaps one of the reasons that The Silent Patient is finding such traction both among early readers and the tranche of movie executives who fought to option it. With its story of female sacrifice and the silencing of a woman post-trauma, it feels highly relevant in a post #MeToo world. “It’s about silence as a weapon,” Michaelides says. “And it was very clear in my head when I was writing the book that Alicia was surrounded by these men who were imprisoning her. Like Alcestis, Alicia is trapped and she’s denied a voice. It’s a lifetime of being made to think that she wasn’t worthy, she wasn’t good enough, and maybe that’s something that a lot of women [readers] have been responding to.” The novel has already been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, with Michaelides due to write the screenplay, a fitting circularity for a novelist who has spent the past 15 years working as a screenwriter. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk or give any kind of explanation turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the spotlight of the tabloids at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His search for the truth leads him down a terrifying path and threatens to consume him. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I am not even joking when I say I had like 4 or 5 different theories going on in my head, I did get one correctly but still by the time I got to the end my heart was racing so much I thought I was going to have a panic attack, one that I would be okay with.
I needed this 5 star read!! ( )