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How long does it take to read The Silent Patient?

Alex Michaelides

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides takes about 6 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 27 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2018. 352 pages, about 96,800 words.

13 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 10 hours 45 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 27 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 2 minutes

The page count is the median across 26 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. 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.

Content warnings (AI-checked, may be incomplete)
  • violence
  • suicide
  • abuse

How these are chosen

Subjects: Fiction, psychological, Fiction, thrillers, London (england), fiction, Artists, fiction, Marriage, fiction, Fiction, thrillers, general

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