The patient is forty years old now, though he's been confined to this institution since he was only six. That's an entire life in this place, and no one seems to be able to figure out what's wrong with him.
Not that they haven't tried.
His symptoms have changed over the years, and each time a new doctor attempts to cure him of whatever ails him, the poor doctor ends up being driven to madness. For some, it even ends in suicide. There are no happy endings, it seems.
This leaves the patient isolated in his room, with staff and other patients warned against interacting with him. He's a lost cause. Someone best left alone.
But young psychiatrist Parker H. thinks differently. He's confident that somewhere over the years, someone missed a detail about this patient that could finally unlock a cure. And he's just headstrong enough to believe he's the one who can finally do it. So Parker begins talking to him.
It doesn't take long for things to get strange. Parker starts experiencing things he can't simply diagnose. And he's about to find out why everyone else stopped trying.
With The Patient, Jasper DeWitt writes a terse, gripping study of one man desperate to find reason in madness. Told through a series of online posts by Parker H., the novel feels like we're reading something we shouldn't be. And of course, that only makes us all the more eager to keep reading.
DeWitt lays the groundwork for what's to come by first revealing the terrible fates of the patient's previous doctors. Before we even meet the man, we're convinced he's a monster. But then Parker finally talks to him, and things don't quite add up.
Like Hannibal Lecter, he's almost disarming at first. He doesn't immediately seem like the monster we've been warned about. Like Parker, we start to wonder if everyone else got it wrong. Maybe this poor man has spent nearly his entire life locked away because no one ever really understood him.
It's exactly what DeWitt wants us to think. And by the time we realize we may have been wrong, we're already in too deep.
My only real complaint is that the ending feels a bit abrupt. After all that careful buildup, I wanted just a little more time to sit with where everything ultimately lands. Instead, the book ends almost as quickly as things finally come together.
Still, that didn't take much away from how much I enjoyed the book. The Patient is short, creepy, and incredibly easy to tear through. Even when I wasn't reading, I kept thinking about what could really be going on inside that hospital. It's a quick dose of psychological terror that hit the spot for me this spooky season.
For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2026, 85)
Great review! I hate abrupt endings! If you took the time to craft a great story, give it a great, unrushed ending. Have a good weekend!
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