The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

I bought this book earlier this year in preparation for an assignment in English class. I never got around to reading it until my flight to London. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides packs in mystery, crime, and suspense, perfect for the plane. It successfully highlights the importance of confronting the mistakes of the past and he creatively weaves in niche Greek mythology.

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Alicia Berenson, a renown modern artist, is found one night in her apartment having shot her husband five times in the head with a gun. After Gabriel Berenson dies, officials send Alicia to the Grove, an institution on the outskirts of London where she refuses to speak. In fact, she went silent since the day her husband died. 

Theo Faber is a psychotherapist who hears of Alicia Berenson’s interesting case. He joins the Grove, hoping to meet and ultimately help Alicia speak again. He sets up therapy sessions and works relentlessly to help Alicia. He travels to her exhibitions, speaks with people who know her, and reads about her works of art. The jury is convinced Alicia murdered her husband, but Theo is not. He finds patterns and connections from literature and Alicia’s life to her artwork, which he supposes represents her feelings and emotions. 

Theo returns home one day to find sexual emails his wife had sent to another man. Theo’s life at home begins to fall apart. Determined not to leave his disloyal wife, Theo finds his therapy sessions with Alicia to be therapeutic for himself too. As Theo battles Alicia’s desires to heal, he finds himself buried in a mess. 

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The Silent Patient began with a slow start. As with most mysteries, all the characters and events seem quite random until the end nears. The plot quickens as you go along and the chapters remain short and fast-paced. I definitely consider this a successful on the mystery aspect. The endings of many mystery novels appear random in light of what happened in the plot, often tying to a small detail mentioned once. The Silent Patient addresses details, plot, and characters mentioned throughout the entire book; the ending truly “clicks”. 

London + Paris

I haven’t been active on here for a little while; I’ve been traveling for the past week and a half or so. Last night, I landed in Logan after visiting London and Paris. 

For the most part, I want to say European countries differ greatly. Each of the major cities I’ve visited in the past two years outfits unique architecture, cuisine, and culture. Lisbon architecture consisted of walls plastered with tile, each unique from the last. Lisbonions regularly indulged in two popular foods: Natas and different flavored pot pies. Greece prided itself in its white plaster architecture and colorful roofs. Although located on the Mediterranian, the Greeks did not consume quite as much seafood as I expected, focusing instead on lamb and chicken. 

Of the four European countries I’ve had the opportunity to visit, I believe the lifestyle and culture in England are most similar to that of the States. Shops remain open throughout the entire day (yes, shops close midway through the day in Greece and reopen at night) and dinner time felt similar to that of Americans (6:30ish-8:00). I loved London’s parks and tourism. We lived across the street from two major parks. I felt refreshed after walking through them to access various parts of the city felt refreshing. Trees line the sidewalks so the sun didn’t beat directly on pedestrians and the road was a mix of sand and concrete, producing various textural sounds when we walked. 

In London, we visited some properties belonging to the royal family. My favorite was Windsor Castle by far. The interior of the castle blew me away. Rooms decorated from floor to ceiling in gold, red velvet furniture lining the edges of the rooms, and 500-year-old mirrors still hanging where someone originally hung them. 

I also enjoyed walking along Thames River. Although a murky brownish yellow color, Thames was the vein of London. The London Eye and modern tourism stood on one side. Connected by the Tower Bridge, Parliament, old cathedrals, the shopping district, and the royal family residences occupied the other. After spending three days in London, I feel pretty confident about navigation. The city’s layout is fairly simple and the neighborhoods often had a distinct purpose (some filled with cafes, others for shopping, governmental for others, etc.). My family took the Eurostar to Paris afterward. 

Paris is by far my favorite city. I’ve never been to a city with the same pizazz. From an honest standpoint, just about everything in Paris is appealing to a tourist. From being the easiest country in the EU to buy tax refundable good to exhibiting the grandest squares at a frequency I’ve never seen, Paris buzzes with an excitement that leaves visitors curious about what’s around the corner. The Tour Eiffel was grand. There’s a huge–probably 1 square mile–space dedicated just for viewing. Different altitudes make for different views. At the uppermost level, tourists stand by the National Academy of Dance. This was the perfect place to take pictures of the full tower. Directly below, grass covered a large rectangular span of land, allowing the thousands of daily visitors to relax and sit directly in front of the tower. Fountains sprouted with water at timed intervals, making for the perfect photoshoot. 

Rotaries, bringing together 6-7 streets, fill the city (eg. Arc de Triomphe, Tour Eiffel, etc.). What intrigued me the most about these rotaries was not the traffic itself, but the building directly facing it. These houses were like isosceles triangles. The narrowest part of the buildings directly facing the rotary and became wider as one walked further away from the center. Cafes often occupied those triangular properties at the tip of the rotary. This sort of city layout, though less space-efficient than the grid-like organization of major US cities, gave Paris a unique taste and feel. 

I must be frank, I’m not the biggest fan of traditional French food. While I enjoy duck and various breads, I’m not the biggest fan of creamy foods. Unfortunately, my family did not get to eat at many restaurants during our trip. Our schedule becomes a little wack during vacations so we usually skipped lunch and ate at a cafe in the afternoon. Nevertheless, France has diverse food options. I found many of the cafes serve foods that were a blend of traditional french and more modern french foods. 

I’m home now, but I miss Paris. The late-night buzz of the city, eating dinner at 10 PM, the architecture of the city…all of it is truly stunning. It’s a city I would revisit again and again and again. 

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Some photos from my trip…

Buckingham Palace

Windsor town

Westminster Abbey side view

Westminster Abbey front view

London bus

View from the London Eye

Tower Bridge

London Panorama

Bond St. London 

Tour Eiffel behind the fountains

Tour Eiffel at night

Palace of Versailles 

Panorama of Versailles jardin

Versaille jardin b+w

Versailles jardin color

Apollo @Versaille

Versaille flowers

Sainte Chapelle stained glass

Tour Eiffel flashing at 10 PM!

View from Arc de Triomphe 

View of Champs Elysees

Musée Louvre

Another Arc by the Louvre @sunset

View from the Tour Eiffel @sunset

What I learned from Launch X

This weekend, I came home from Launch X, a month-long summer business program. Launch was an exciting experience and I’ve been reflecting upon my experience these past few days. While I learned a more strategic way to approach starting a business and some scary realities about entrepreneurship in general, what strikes me as most valuable is the mindset this program instilled in me about areas outside of entrepreneurship. 

Everything is learnable if you put in the time. I write about this because I struggled quite a bit in physics this past year and it’s not something I try to hide. I remember being extremely frustrated during the school year because I couldn’t understand the homework questions and the concepts. My frustration led me to call my parents frantically, trying to get help. It also led me to bang my fists on my desk, crumple up sheets of scratch paper, and bury my head deep in frustration. I've been reflecting on my experience learning physics and in retrospect, I probably would have understood the topics better had I spent more time. Over the year, physics became one of those subjects I walked into believing it was hard. I almost gave myself leeway for not understanding and I was easily frustrated when I couldn’t understand something right away. Being immersed in a startup at Launch taught me that while so many things in life are out of control, learning is one of the most controllable things we can do. During the program, my team and I met often. We worked long nights, we debugged our website, and we worked to better our product constantly. Yet even with all that time spent, nothing is guaranteed. Whether we will get investors, whether our team dynamic will stay fresh, and whether we will actually breach into the market are aspects out of our control. What is in my control though, is how much time I want to spend learning new skills to better our company. Launch has helped me come to this new realization that if I put in the time, I can learn anything. So many things are out of control, but how much we know about anything is within our control. I aspire to have this tenacious mindset and patience with myself during the most stressful nights of the upcoming school year.

It’s not the experience that matters. It’s the mindset. Many students who came to Launch already started companies and non-profits. Some had several nonprofits, a company, and a school club all under their belt. I’m not gonna lie: it felt a little bit disorienting when I learned how much the people around me had done. By the end of the program, however, when I looked at the more further developed startups, I noticed that the experience of each individual team member didn’t dictate the strength of the startup. The mindset did. The more developed teams had strong-willed individuals who felt passionate about their idea. The team comprised of people who believed their idea could make a difference in this world, driving them to excel in their efforts, time commitment, and dedication. I suppose this bounces off my first point about having the right mindset when learning new things. At the end of the day, nothing is 100% innate and a large portion of success comes from making the most of what we’re given. 

Even though this program lasted a little longer than my schedule would have liked, I don't regret it one bit. While I learned about entrepreneurship, physically being immersed in that startup environment and under those pressures alleviated some of my other mindsets about life. Thank you to those at the program who made it so amazing and thank you to my parents who made this experience possible.