Empty suspense. [The Patient by Jasper DeWitt]

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.

In the description for Jasper DeWitt's The Patient, the book is linked stylistically to Stephen King. Even if the hint of supernatural was to be unsatisfactory, I expected a solid foundation for it. even if the explanation was ambiguous and lacking, I expected consistent pacing. And that's where the book falls apart for me.

Reading as a set of forum posts, The Patient aims to read like a first-hand account of a months long patient encounter. One question that came to mind as I read was, do people really say "however" in regular conversation? When I read or write the word it feels as easy, as smooth as butter. Hearing the conversations as regurgitated in the dated entries, the flow of the words felt inorganic.

I really thought we were going to get some horrific supernatural element or an obscure medical explanation to explain everything away. What was delivered, however, was much less appealing. It came out of left field, with a jump to reach it as conclusion. Background characters were never developed enough for me to feel for them or for them to serve a purpose outside of buffering the narrating protagonist. At the beginning of the book I was thinking four and at my most dissatisfied two, but because the story isn't the worst and someone might take something away from it I did not I'm giving it a 3 star rating.

The Patient was published July 07, 2020.