The Silent Patient

The readers of my blog should know that I usually don’t read psychological thrillers and am not a big fan of thriller novels. But I must admit that Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient did not disappoint and was a roller coaster ride. Without giving too much away, the novel tells the story of Alicia Berenson, a successful painter from London who murdered her husband, Gabriel, a fashion photographer, and then goes silent after the incident. It follows a criminal psychologist and therapist, Theo Faber, who becomes obsessed with getting Alicia to talk and uncover the truth behind the murder. Alex used flashbacks to Alicia’s past, interspersed with Theo’s present-day therapy sessions, to maintain a sense of intrigue and a steady pace. The plot’s twists and turns are skillfully executed, culminating in a satisfying and shocking ending. I recommend reading this book if you want to escape from reality for a day or two. 

After reading this, you may be interested in The Maidens by the same author. 

Here are some thoughtful quotes from the book

“We are made up of different parts, some good, some bad, and a healthy mind can tolerate this ambivalence and juggle both good and bad at the same time. Mental illness is precisely about a lack of this kind of integration - we end up losing contact with the unacceptable parts of ourselves.”

“Choosing a lover is lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible”

“The aim of the therapy is not to correct the past but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.”

All the Light We Cannot See

In All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr skillfully captures the essence of human resilience in the face of the immense upheaval of World War II. The book is a heartwarming and inspiring tale of hope, optimism, and self-determination, following the lives of two characters, Marie-Laure, a blind girl from France, and Werner Pfenning, an orphan raised in Nazi Germany. Their stories intertwine against the harrowing backdrop of war, highlighting the indomitable human spirit even in the darkest of times. The book's poignant conclusion reminds us of the sobering reality of war and the importance of learning from the past, yet their journeys serve as a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of striving forward. For those with an interest in historical fiction, I would strongly recommend this book.

Sea of Tranquility

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, published amid the COVID-19 pandemic, examines the themes of human existence and perseverance during a crisis. Woven inside these themes, however, is the bigger metaphysical question of what constitutes or doesn’t constitutes time and reality. Are we living in a simulation? Is reality real? If life is all but a simulation, is human flourishing still possible? 

In a little more than 270 pages, Mandel transports you through four distinct periods (1912, 2020, 2203, and 2401) while narrating the tale of three characters who experience the same abnormal phenomena at various points in time and one detective who investigates this anomaly. The interconnectedness between these periods is what makes the book very enthralling. As the story unfolds, the logic and sequence become more explicit, revealing the author’s purpose.

If you are a science fiction fan and love such topics as space colonization and time travel, you will enjoy reading this book. However, you will probably benefit from reading The Glass Hotel first as some overlapping characters appear in both books (which I learned later). 

Here is my favorite quote from the book: “…as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

And one more related to public health: “It seems like it’s been fairly well contained,” but here’s an epidemiological question: if you’re talking about outbreaks of infectious disease, isn’t fairly well contained essentially the same thing as not contained at all?”