'Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides was not only an
international best seller but also one of my favourite thrillers of all time. Alex's
world was profoundly atmospheric and enthralling in his debut work, replete
with twists and turns. Having had a debut success of that magnitude behind him,
his follow-up work 'Maidens' was undoubtedly one of the year's most anticipated
books. Has he managed to hit the bull's eye this time around? Let's have a
look.
Maidens is the story of a group therapist
named Marianna, mourning the loss of her beloved husband, Sebastian. She gets
to know that her niece, Zoe, a student at Cambridge, has just lost her best
friend. Without wasting time, she leaves for Cambridge only to find that the
police have arrested someone she thinks is innocent. Will Marianna manage to
find out the truth? The book essentially tries to unravel this mystery.
It's a well-known fact that writing a follow-up book
for your debut best seller is a highly daunting task. It's a double challenge.
You are attempting to please the fans of your previous work and win over those
who hated it in the first place.
While 'The Silent Patient' had a novel premise, 'The
Maidens' is a generic thriller, at best. The writer has tried novelty in the
narrative by throwing Greek mythology in between. But to be very frank, those
bits felt forced and didn't gel that well with the main plot, unlike in the
first book. The plot twists are hardly unpredictable and, at times, are pretty
illogical.
Towards the climax, the antagonist reveals to another
character making a significant revelation –' they were just a distraction, a
red herring.' Though the author has presented it as a 'big reveal,' most of the
discerning readers might have already guessed by then that a massive chunk of
the scenes preceding it was also nothing but distractions or red-herrings! This
also sums up exactly what is the major problem with the book. A significant
portion of the novel is spent on the protagonist's paranoid obsession with a
professor named Edward Forensca and his secret study group. To give Alex due
credit, it works in the beginning. Still, as the story progresses, it becomes
pretty evident that the 'secret' study group is also nothing but another
red-herring.
The book is told in a third-person narrative focusing
on the protagonist Marianna and her inner demons. The characters are flat and
one-dimensional, with the only exception being Fred. The climax has got two big
reveals. Though the first one (about the antagonist) was entirely predictable,
I must confess that I didn't see the second one coming. It was perhaps the only
high point in the narrative as far as I am concerned.
The principal narrator of Silent Patient, the renowned
psycho-therapist Theo Faber, also appears in 'The Maidens' towards the third
part of the story. (Well, I don't want to reveal any spoilers here, but I must
say that the appearance of Theo did help the narrative elevate a bit). The
scenes involving Marianne and Theo were well written, I felt.
But all these little attempts don't help this from
becoming a half-baked attempt.
On the whole, 'the Maiden's' is not a boring book. It's
pretty racy and entertaining. But with its cliched plot and illogical twists,
it's no great work either. If you are pretty okay with generic thrillers, you
can give this one a try. But don't expect a 'Silent Patient,' you might get
disappointed!
I liked the way Alex ended the novel by bringing in
the characters from his previous work. I wish the rest of the book were also
that much fun!
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