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 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. 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.

A Library Journal Winter/Spring Best Debut Novel “Delightfully bonkers.”—The New York Times Book Review “Crisp and creepy debut...the central plot and storytelling are gripping, built on smart psychological parrying and good old-fashioned gross-outs...entertainingly intense. A clever cocktail of psychological thriller and supernatural horror.” —Kirkus Reviews "Taut debut...Fans of Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient will want to check this one out." —Publishers Weekly “DeWitt imbues the narrative with existential horror, and its creeping dread will linger in readers’ minds. Fans of Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient (2019) and Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth (2018) will gobble this one up.” —Booklist “A bone chiller.”—Library Journal “The Patient is a narrative of slowly building horror that will grip the reader with a continuous set of shivers.”—New York Journal of Books “A stunning debut! DeWitt's The Patient is a thrilling, compulsive page-turner that will appeal to fans of F. Paul Wilson, Sarah Pinborough, and Alex Michaelides.” —Brian Keene, best-selling author and World Horror Grandmaster Award winner “‘Insidious evil’ is such an overused term, but there is no other way to describe what prowls the hallways of this riveting novella. A compulsive read I devoured in one day. And the ending . . . it still haunts me.” —F. Paul Wilson, New York Times best-selling creator of the Repairman Jack series “The Patient is a fascinating and frightening read that comes at you like the monster under your bed.” —Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author

Autorentext

JASPER DEWITT lives in New York City. This is his first novel.

Klappentext

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 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. 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.

Leseprobe
March 13, 2008

I write this because, as of now, I am not sure if I am privy to a terrible secret or if I myself am insane. Being a practicing psychiatrist, I realize that would obviously be bad for me both ethically and from a business standpoint. However, since I cannot believe I’m crazy, I’m posting this story because you’re probably the only people who would even consider it possible. For me, this is a matter of responsibility to humanity. 

Let me say before I start that I wish I could be more specific about the names and places I’ve mentioned here, but I do need to hold down a job and can’t afford to be blacklisted in the medical and mental health fields as someone who goes around spilling the secrets of patients, no matter how special the case. So while the events I describe in this account are true, the names and places have had to be disguised so that I can keep my career safe while also trying to keep my readers safe.

What few specifics I can give are these: My story took place in the early 2000s at a state psychiatric hospital in the United States. My fiancée, Jocelyn, a puckishly intelligent, ferociously conscientious, and radiantly beautiful trust-funder who moonlighted as a Shakespeare scholar, was still mired in her doctoral thesis on the women in King Lear. Because of that thesis, and because of my desire to stay as close to her as possible, I had decided to interview only at hospitals in Connecticut.

On the one hand, having gone to one of the most prestigious New England medical schools and followed with an equally rigorous and esteemed residency in the same region, my mentors were particularly adamant on the subject of my next professional step. Appointments at little-known, poorly funded hospitals were for the mere mortals from Podunk State, not doctors with Lux et Veritas on their diplomas, and particularly not doctors who had done as well as I had in my studies and clinical training.

I, on the other hand, could not have cared less about such professional one-upmanship. A brush with the ugly side of the mental health system in my childhood, following my mother’s institutionalization for paranoid schizophrenia, had made me far more interested in fixing the broken parts of medicine than ensconcing myself in its comfortably functional upper echelons.

But in order to get a job even at the worst hospital, I would need references, which meant that the faculty’s prejudices would play a part in my decision- making. One particularly curmudgeonly doctor I turned to happened to know the medical director at the nearby state hospital from his own medical school days. At least, he told me, working un…