The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

The cover says ‘The perfect thriller’ and it is. 

Theo Faber is a psychotherapist with a mission: make Alicia Berenson speak again. Alicia was a talented artist and married to the love of her life, Gabriel. However, she ended up shooting him 5 times in the head one evening in her studio. She tries to commit suicide, but doesn’t succeed. 

During her trial, she refuses to speak, is convicted of the murder, and locked up in a secure psychiatric unit, The Grove. Silence can speak louder than words, and the finale portrait that Alicia creates draws on the Greek mythology Alcestis. But what actually happened – and what made Alicia kill her love?

Theo is convinced that he can treat Alicia and make her tell her story. He is obsessed with the story and mystery of Alicia, and when a vacancy at The Grove opens up, he finds a way in. He goes over and above the calling and duty of his position to uncover the silence. He starts digging around her past and family. He meets with her cousin, Paul, who has a history of gambling and still lives with his mom in an old house. He meets with people from the art world, and finds that Alicia was on her way up with prices rising. He discovers that perhaps Alicia’s silence goes deeper than the murder of Gabriel. 

The narrative is by Theo, but also includes Alicia’s diary entries. Alicia’s history is unfolded, but it also turns out, bit-by-bit, that Theo himself has had a difficult upbringing. Their parallel stories are well written, and the author has managed to include psychological issues within the psychological theme. 

The ending takes some turns and makes it a highly recommendable psychological thriller. It is well written, perfect pace, and it will keep you guessing as it twists and turns. 

Pick it up if you liked The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Happy reading!

Reviewed by Lotte Bastholm

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Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

If you want to remain happily mesmerized by the inner workings of Silicon Valley and what you imagine to be cutting edge discoveries made by great young minds working all hours of the day and night in open spaces full of inspirational toys, then don’t read John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood. 

If you want to stay comfortably attached to the myth of tech startups and all the good they want to contribute to society, then don’t read John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood. 

If you ever believed that the best education, most money and much sought after networks produced the greatest minds, incredible results, and world- and life changing products and you want to keep believing that, then don’t read John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood. 

If, however, you are up for some myth busting of the extensively researched, well written, fascinating, frightening and exciting kind, then I suggest you run down to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood. 

The book follows a young ambitious Stanford dropout, Elisabeth Holmes, and her quest to change healthcare in America and fulfill a goal she sets at age 8 to become a billionaire (maybe that right there should have been a red flag) with a new blood taking technique where you can test blood with a single finger prick system and merely one drop of blood. A technique - and device - that turn out to not actually exist. Yes, there is a good deal of science and scientific explanations in the book, but don’t let that scare you off as it is necessary, very well written and not at all difficult to understand. 

The system Holmes, and her company Theranos, are selling is surprisingly (to some) difficult to implement, but Holmes, not one to give up easily, decides to forge ahead, not as one would imagine - or hope - by pulling the product, slowing down, focusing on more research and development, but rather by trying to find a way to continue selling the faulty product by the help of her boyfriend and partner Sunny Balwani, and an intricate web of lies and deception involving participants and investors (all named) that include some of the savviest minds and deepest pockets in America - not to mention an employee burn rate of astronomical and diabolical proportions. The method is simple: as soon as an employee discovers inconsistencies or technical problems and solutions that they find ethically and morally questionable, they are asked to leave, often after being bullied and threatened into signing extensive (additional) non-disclosure agreements.

The book is full of twists and turns, many of them so unbelievable that you couldn’t have made it up. Bad Blood will rival any thriller out there with it’s sociopathic characters, spies in nondescript vehicles, outlandish harassment techniques and overall deplorable and shocking behaviour. 

It would be a ‘merely’ fascinating, intriguing and fun rollercoaster of a read, if it weren’t for the lives that were ruined and the potential frightening consequences to the health of hundreds of thousands of patients had Elisabeth Holmes and Theranos been allowed to continue. Finally, Bad Blood is an indictment of a world infatuated with ‘the new’, with scientific discoveries we dream of but don’t really understand and the danger of a ‘no questions asked’ love affair with tech and the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs of the world. But it is also an important story of the gratitude we all owe to the courageous people who are willing to come forward to reveal difficult truths at their own, very real peril.

Happy reading!

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Why Don’t You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It? A Mother’s Suggestions by Patricia Marx and Roz Chast

Is that the best book title or what? 

A book for all mothers - and sons and daughters of mothers - AND for fans of writer Patricia Marx and cartoonist Roz Chast, both longtime contributors to The New Yorker magazine, this is a small and wonderful book that will make you laugh at the crazy things mothers say to their children under the guise of giving advice and guidance.

Most of us have experienced moments of disbelief at what our mothers have passed on as sage advice or commentary on our lives and some of us have even experienced that (frightening) moment when we realize that those exact same words are coming out of our own mouths to our own children. 

Fortunately for some of us time and distance allows us to be less aghast and more amused by said comments and fortunately for all of us, Patricia Marx’ mother was in a league of her own and Roz Chast has the ability to perfectly illustrate the craziness with love and affection.

“When Daddy and I come up for Parents’ Weekend,” my mother wrote to me one summer I was at overnight camp (I was nine), “you are to stop whatever you ate doing and run up and hug us. Even if you are in the middle of a tennis match. It’s too embarrassing to be the only parents whose daughter doesn’t miss them.”

Happy Funny reading!

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Save Me The Plums by Ruth Reichl

I started buying Gourmet Magazine in 1998 when I moved to New York; the perfect epicurean magazine to match my new life in the big city, I thought, and I have loved it ever since. My first issues turned into a beloved and probably unnecessarily large collection that survived right until a couple of months ago when Marie Kondo ‘moved in’ and enticed me to give away about half.

Gourmet Magazine was the premier food magazine for decades. First published in 1941 it gained notoriety and a huge following with the arrival of Ruth Reichl as its editor in 1996. Ms Reichl had at that point been the food critic of The Los Angeles Times as well as the New York Times but trying her hand at editing a magazine she had loved since she first came across an issue in a used bookstore at the age of eight, turned out to be a very different job, with more ups and downs, joys and sorrows than she could ever have anticipated.

In her latest memoir, Save me the Plums, Ruth Reichl takes the reader on the journey that turned out to be the rise and fall of Gourmet Magazine, a magazine that under her leadership became THE magazine not just for food lovers, but also for travellers, adventurers and lovers of literature. The Paris, Rome, New York etc issues of Gourmet are legendary, as was her genius idea to invite well known authors to contribute in long form to the magazine’s content pages. Writers like David Foster Wallace who set out to write about The Maine Lobster Festival and ended up writing a now epic piece on human beings’ relationship to killing animals, in this case throwing live lobsters into boiling water. A piece that the editors and publisher feared would drive subscribers, readers and advertisers away in droves, but turned out to bring in merely two complaints and hundreds more readers.

The David Foster Wallace example is just one of many great pioneering stories in the book; tales of courage and doubt, of an ever changing and expanding food scene; of bringing together New York restaurants to feed emergency workers in the wake of 9/11. But more than anything Save me the Plums is full of stories of people for whom food, travel and striving for excellence was their guiding light and what made them love going to work every day. 

Save me the Plums also offers a view into Ruth Reichl’s own family history, growing up with a bipolar mother who was the source of much uncertainty in a little girl’s life and who longed for a life of fame and luxury to which she felt she had been born and a doting, and a loving father who designed books for a living and encouraged his daughter to follow her passion wherever that might take her.

Well, it took her to Gourmet and for that we will be forever grateful. As the cashier at the sandwich shop at New York’s JFK airport said when Ruth Reichl tried to pay for a sandwich the day after the magazine was suddenly and shockingly closed down in October of 2009: “This ones on me,” she said. “I loved that magazine. I’m really going to miss it.”

I still do, and I am grateful for the wonderful issues I cherish - and still use.

Happy Reading!

Reviewed by Isabella

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