Parents' Guide to The Silent Patient

Parents need to know that Alex Michaelides' The Silent Patient is a chilling twisty thriller written for adults. No one can understand why painter Alicia Berenson would have murdered Gabriel, her fashion photographer husband. Alicia never says a word to the police when they arrive at her London home and offers no explanation at her trial. Sent to the Grove, a secure psychiatric facility, she continues to maintain her silence for years—until she meets psychotherapist Theo Faber, who narrates the story. As Theo tries to unlock the reason for Alicia's silence, he also reveals his own story: childhood abuse, a battle with drug addiction, and the discovery of his wife's infidelity. When the truth about what happened that night is finally revealed, it's a shocking twist few readers will ever expect. Police at the murder scene find fragments of skull, brain, and hair on the walls and blood running across the floor. Alicia's behavior at the Grove is often violent: she slashes a patient's throat with a broken plate, cuts her own wrists, stabs a woman in the eye, and tries to strangle Theo. Sex and betrayal are at the heart of the story, but descriptions are more about memories than anything graphic. Theo recalls his first time having sex with his wife, Kathy, as the "most erotic, blissful night of my life" and says that they "f--k" all the time. Alicia writes in her diary that she always feels "an insatiable hunger" for Gabriel. Theo has been smoking marijuana since he was a university student. After giving it up for a period of time, he's begun again. At the Grove, Alicia suffers side effects from the heavy antipsychotics she's been prescribed. The diverse cast of characters regularly use "f--k" in their conversations and some bond over sharing cigarettes. The main characters are White British and White American while the staff at the Grove includes people of Indian, Latvian, Greek, French, and Caribbean heritage.