Book: The Patient
Author: Jasper Dewitt
Pages: 225
Read On: Kindle
How Long it Took Me Read: 6 hours with a couple of breaks.
Plot Summary: 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 on the outside world. Parker, brilliant and overconfident, takes it upon himself to discover what ails this mystery patient and finally cure him. But from his first encounter with the mystery patient, things spiral out of control, and, facing a possibility beyond his wildest imaginings, Parker is forced to question everything he thought he knew.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse and Suicide.
Things I Loved:
1. First up, this book has a few things that always, always draw me in.
Mental Asylum: Been There.
Rookie Mental Health Professional: Done That.
Enigmatic Patient: Kinda...not nowhere near this level of creepiness. (Thank God!)
My interest was piqued and then some. This book was everything and more I could want in a book and more. My background in Clinical Psychology always makes me lookout for books that deal with mental health, mental hospitals and psychiatry. Also, I read it at pretty much at the perfect time, during a thunderstorm. It made my whole reading experience so much more creepier.
2. The book is told in a confessional style, like a person sharing an experience on a Reddit-like forum. Fun fact: This book, well the original idea for it was first conceived on Reddit. The author shared a story idea and people seemed to love it and that's how he developed this whole book! Cool na?!
So back to the book, it's told via a psychiatrist sharing his story about a mysterious, undiagnosable former patient of his on a now defunct medical forum. We are also shown medical transcripts and therapy notes and some audio files (transcribed of course.) All of these elements move the story along nicely and add to the whole 'real' vibe of the story.
3. There are a handful of characters in the book, the doctors and nurses in the Asylum and all of them, brief as they might be are done well and come across as people you might meet in a place like that. Everything from a pill-pushing senior doctor to a kind and caring nurse, all of these side characters are done well.
4. Parker, our protagonist is the one who we spend most, if not all our time with. He is earnest, for most part, slightly eager to prove himself and slightly conceited in thinking he can cure a patient that so many other before him have failed to do. He is like so many young, fresh off the boat mental health professionals I've seen, the ones not yet jaded by the system, the eager to please and the ones sure they can magically make things better. Parker was relatable and likeable and for most part how he did things and reacted to things was pretty sensible.
5. Joe- our patient, is deliciously diabolical. I mean, you know that going in but to see him and his ways unfold in the book was a thing of joy. He is subtle, slow and so deliberate. To see Joe, both in the now, as when Parker starts his sessions with him and seeing in the past, as a child wrecking havoc was creepy but wonderful (as in it's terrible but its exactly what a book like this promises in the first place.)
6. The book treads this fine line between a straight forward thriller and something with a supernatural bend. For the first half I kept trying to diagnose Joe, I was *this* close to reaching for my copy of the DSM and figuring out what was his 'condition'. By the end I was glad I had not gone rooting around my flat looking for my DSM :) For full disclosure, and this is not a spoiler, this is a HORROR novel. So if you're not a fan of the genre, like my poor sister, do not go for it. If you scare easily, this might not be the book for you.
7. The book is short read at 225 pages and it's a perfect book to read in one sitting. Also, given it's subject matter and its pace, it was the perfect length. I am glad it wasn't stretched for no good reason.
8. The mental asylum itself was so perfectly brought to life, having worked in a couple of these places, I can tell you it's exactly like this. Derelict, slacking in maintenance, sometimes sad and with their own kind of energy. This book really took me back to my days of working in these large government hospitals and wandering the halls in the psychiatric ward. It's very atmospheric and in the best way possible.
Rating: 4/5
If you are looking for a sufficiently creepy book this rainy season, this might be a good idea.
General Thoughts: I honestly went into this book expecting one thing and ended up coming with something entirely different. And from I understand, solely based off some of the reviews I read on Good Reads, I was not the only one. Most people go in expecting a straight forward thriller/mystery novel and the book is not quite that. This slight twist, if you can call it that, was something I didn't mind, in fact it kinda made me love the book more.
Things I Loved:
1. First up, this book has a few things that always, always draw me in.
Mental Asylum: Been There.
Rookie Mental Health Professional: Done That.
Enigmatic Patient: Kinda...not nowhere near this level of creepiness. (Thank God!)
My interest was piqued and then some. This book was everything and more I could want in a book and more. My background in Clinical Psychology always makes me lookout for books that deal with mental health, mental hospitals and psychiatry. Also, I read it at pretty much at the perfect time, during a thunderstorm. It made my whole reading experience so much more creepier.
2. The book is told in a confessional style, like a person sharing an experience on a Reddit-like forum. Fun fact: This book, well the original idea for it was first conceived on Reddit. The author shared a story idea and people seemed to love it and that's how he developed this whole book! Cool na?!
So back to the book, it's told via a psychiatrist sharing his story about a mysterious, undiagnosable former patient of his on a now defunct medical forum. We are also shown medical transcripts and therapy notes and some audio files (transcribed of course.) All of these elements move the story along nicely and add to the whole 'real' vibe of the story.
3. There are a handful of characters in the book, the doctors and nurses in the Asylum and all of them, brief as they might be are done well and come across as people you might meet in a place like that. Everything from a pill-pushing senior doctor to a kind and caring nurse, all of these side characters are done well.
4. Parker, our protagonist is the one who we spend most, if not all our time with. He is earnest, for most part, slightly eager to prove himself and slightly conceited in thinking he can cure a patient that so many other before him have failed to do. He is like so many young, fresh off the boat mental health professionals I've seen, the ones not yet jaded by the system, the eager to please and the ones sure they can magically make things better. Parker was relatable and likeable and for most part how he did things and reacted to things was pretty sensible.
5. Joe- our patient, is deliciously diabolical. I mean, you know that going in but to see him and his ways unfold in the book was a thing of joy. He is subtle, slow and so deliberate. To see Joe, both in the now, as when Parker starts his sessions with him and seeing in the past, as a child wrecking havoc was creepy but wonderful (as in it's terrible but its exactly what a book like this promises in the first place.)
6. The book treads this fine line between a straight forward thriller and something with a supernatural bend. For the first half I kept trying to diagnose Joe, I was *this* close to reaching for my copy of the DSM and figuring out what was his 'condition'. By the end I was glad I had not gone rooting around my flat looking for my DSM :) For full disclosure, and this is not a spoiler, this is a HORROR novel. So if you're not a fan of the genre, like my poor sister, do not go for it. If you scare easily, this might not be the book for you.
7. The book is short read at 225 pages and it's a perfect book to read in one sitting. Also, given it's subject matter and its pace, it was the perfect length. I am glad it wasn't stretched for no good reason.
8. The mental asylum itself was so perfectly brought to life, having worked in a couple of these places, I can tell you it's exactly like this. Derelict, slacking in maintenance, sometimes sad and with their own kind of energy. This book really took me back to my days of working in these large government hospitals and wandering the halls in the psychiatric ward. It's very atmospheric and in the best way possible.
Rating: 4/5
If you are looking for a sufficiently creepy book this rainy season, this might be a good idea.
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