Alicia Berenson was
convicted of killing her husband Gabriel but she refused to talk about the
murder and has not spoken a word for six years.
Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, manages to get a job at the facility
where Alicia is a patient. He is
determined to get her to talk. Interspersed
with Theo’s narration are sections from Alicia’s diary describing the time
leading up to Gabriel’s death.
The book is described
as a psychological thriller but there is not a great deal of “edge of the seat”
suspense. There are a number of
questions, however, which do keep the reader interested: Why did Alicia kill Gabriel when she loved
him and was happy in her marriage? Why does
she not speak to explain and/or defend herself?
Why is Theo so obsessed with working with Alicia? And the short chapters add to the fast
pace.
It is the implausibility of some of the events
which I found irritating. Theo arrives
and is immediately able to have Alicia’s medication drastically changed? His obsession with Alicia doesn’t raise any
red flags? A patient in a secure psychiatric
facility can paint a painting and have it framed? The plot twist that people describe as jaw-dropping
requires that the reader be intentionally misled about a key element of Theo’s
story about his marital problems. Cheating
the reader in such a way is like ending a story with “And then I woke up”! And then there’s Alicia’s diary. The entries are totally unrealistic because
writers of journals summarize events and their feelings. Alicia writes pages and pages of dialogue and
describes scenes in great detail?!
In many ways, this
book is a character study. For me, Theo
is the most interesting character. One
of the first things Theo mentions is that “I became a psychotherapist because I
was fucked-up.” He admits to a marijuana
addiction because he “has never learned to contain himself [and] is plagued by
anxious feelings.” He keeps repeating
that “the answers to the present lie in the past.” Then there’s a quotation included: “The aim of therapy is not to correct the
past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over
it.” Finally, there are statements like,
“We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and
patient. Soon it would be impossible to
tell who was who.” The question that
kept me reading was what about his past is Theo not revealing? He is certainly flawed so is he also a silent
patient?
The book is
entertaining enough and a fast read, but any veteran reader of psychological
suspense will probably predict the plot twist long before it is revealed. The novel can best be described as a better
example of escapist fiction.
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