Book Title: The PatientAuthor: Jasper DeWitt
The Silent Patient by way of Stephen King: Parker, a young, overconfident psychiatrist new to his job at a mental asylum miscalculates catastrophically when he undertakes curing a mysterious and profoundly dangerous patient.
In a series of online posts, Parker H., a young psychiatrist, chronicles the harrowing account of his time working at a dreary mental hospital in New England. Through this internet message board, Parker hopes to communicate with the world his effort to cure one bewildering patient.We learn, as Parker did on his first day at the hospital, of the facility’s most difficult, profoundly dangerous case—a forty-year-old man who was originally admitted to the hospital at age six. This patient has no known diagnosis. His symptoms seem to evolve over time. Every person who has attempted to treat him has been driven to madness or suicide.
Desperate and fearful, the hospital’s directors keep him strictly confined and allow minimal contact with staff for their own safety, convinced that releasing him would unleash catastrophe upon the outside world. Parker, brilliant and overconfident, takes it upon himself to discover what ails this patient and finally cure him. But from his first encounter with the mysterious patient, things spiral out of control and, facing a possibility beyond his wildest imaginings, Parker is forced to question everything he thought he knew.
Fans of Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes and Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World will be riveted by Jasper DeWitt’s astonishing debut.
REVIEW AS A READER:
I researched “best psychological thrillers” on Bard.google.com and this book, The Patient, came up as number one. I read through the Amazon description, but I chose it based on Bard’s recommendation.
The psychological mystery and drama started from the first page. The mystery was subtle at first, but it was definitely there. I was hooked and wanted to know more from the first page. The story unfolded slowly but it was never boring.
Reading the book was like driving on long winding roads, not knowing the ultimate destination, and also not being sure what lay right around the bend. The drama moved along without stop. The story never sagged or drove off onto some boring side road. The mystery and suspense were constant.
There was an intimacy in the story as some of it was written in first person. Other parts were written in third person where the story took on more of a bird’s eye view and a bit of narration. It all worked and added to the mystique of the book.
I did feel that at the end of the book, the ending veered off into a bit of unexpected sci-fi or fantasy I was not expecting, but it was still an enjoyable book from start to finish.
REVIEW BY AUTHOR:
The book was written well, and I highlighted several phrases that were memorable. I have them listed below. I learned a lot about presenting a psychological drama for the reader and how to subtly suggest that there was something “off” about people, places and/or things.
I learned about weaving the psychological plotline into the mystery itself as I did notice that there needed to be a timeline that coincided with someone’s hospitalization. I always thought of psychological suspense stories as one kind of book, but I learned from reading The Patient that a crime/mystery timeline supported the story and the psychological elements weaved all throughout this spinal timeline. I found this very helpful as an author myself.
I also learned about how “withholding information from the reader” worked in a psychological mystery. I always feel obligated to reveal everything to the reader, but this is not necessary. Withholding some parts of the truth add to the ultimate surprise and satisfaction of the reader. It’s not dishonesty, but rather more of a slight of hand for the benefit of the story.
This story was very original. It didn’t read like a remake of some other popular novel — at least I didn’t see anything like that. The originality of the storyline, as well as the unwrapping of the greater mystery, held my interest the entire way, to the last page.
I would recommend this book to any reader of psychological mysteries. I would even recommend this to medical mystery readers.
SOME MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM THE PATIENT:
- “. . . her voice carrying a faint lilt that I recognized as Irish,”
- “So forcing my frustration down to a simmer, I gave him the most deferential nod I could manage. It seemed to appease him.”
- “This was the sort of place where pain of any kind was either flushed out with medication and trips to boutique psychiatrists or kept at a respectable distance with copious expenditures. It was, in short, a place where anything unpleasant, let alone a supernatural horror, had been ruthlessly gentrified out of sight and out of mind.”
- “He spun around with military precision . . .”
- “She had a kindness to her, but it was girded with such naturally aristocratic steel that I imagined she’s been born ringing a bell to summon servants.”
