Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Lori Gottlieb's memoir, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed was highly recommended in Renee's Reading Club on Facebook. The idea of the group is to recommend titles so there is nearly no discussion about the books to avoid spoilers. (Details about the books are relegated to a different Facebook group.) I really had no idea what to expect, even after reading a blurb.

This memoir was definitely a heftier read than I expected it to me, but it was so worthwhile. I guess you have to believe that talk therapy is good for mental health in order to really get anything out of this book.

Lori Gottlieb takes an indirect career route to becoming a psychotherapist. She's been at it for a few years when she's blindsighted when "Boyfriend" dumps her. She's having trouble getting through the days and determines that it's time for the therapist to find a therapist.

By sharing anecdotes from Gottlieb's sessions with her patients (not her preferred term) and her sessions with her therapist, readers get a better understanding of what therapy can and can't do. Her narrative is completely relatable. I found myself nodding, laughing, being very moved as I read through the memoir.

I think this could be a great book to discuss with the proper book club. I know I'll recommend this book to others. Everyone should be able to get something very positive out of the experience of reading this book.

 

The Silent Patient

Alex Michaelides' debut novel, The Silent Patient, is certainly a page turner. It's a thriller mystery along the lines of Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. I stayed up all night to finish it. So rather than working my brain hard to figure out how to best summarize this, I'll give you the publisher's summary.

"Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him... "

I gave this novel 4 stars on goodreads, but that's because I felt compelled to keep reading. In ordinary times, I think I probably would have only given this 3 stars. But as they say, timing is everything. After two of my last three books were Holocaust books and the other was a long, historical family saga, I needed something a bit lighter. Or more of an escape. Or something like that. The Silent Patient perfectly fit that bill. Hence the 4 stars.