The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

A review as short and sweet as my feelings towards this book.

Synopsis

The protagonist is a widowed and grieving group therapist who one day gets a call from her orphaned niece telling her that her friend and roommate had been gruesomely murdered at her university. Our protagonist, Mariana, thus embarks on a journey to Cambridge to play detective.

Review (Non-Spoiler)

This is my second Michaelides book, and coincidentally also the second book he has written, which has accidentally made me a chronological reader of his books. Anyway. When I read The Silent Patient (ref: His first novel), I thought that the psychological insights were only there because the book was set within the realm of psychology. We had our therapist protagonist, our mental institution, our sick patient etc. But The Maidens actually showed me that perhaps psychology just fascinates Alex. Like, even this book is so deeply rooted in psychology, especially the psychology of childhood trauma and its impacts on adulthood, that I felt like I was in a psychology lecture led by a classics professor (not in a bad way- I wish my lectures had such a novel-like delivery).

Once again, as with the first novel, the protagonist is a therapist, and also once again, the link between people's fuckedup-ness is shown to be closely knit with the fuckedup-ness of their childhood. Daddy issues, mommy issues, you name it, it's there. 

One thing that kind of made me laugh/gag was the strong 'Psychologist Language' spread out throughout the book. The way that the psychologist characters interact with one another was accurate and yet hilarious. If you haven't studied psychology, it's something like a sickening empathy with which they communicate (see:below)

Therapist 1: Yeah, I'm just having X issue.

Therapist 2: Hm, yeah *empathy intensifies* I hear you.

Therapist 1: It's been hard since my husband died. I guess I'm still going through stage 1 of Kübler-Ross's grief.

Therapist 2: *doe-eyed, nodding empathetically* Hm, yeah (in a very soft tone). Have you considered Freud's psychoanalytic theory that you just want to please your dad sexually, but couldn't, so you found a husband to fulfil those needs, and now that he's gone, it's just your father's disappointment resurfacing all over again?

You get the idea :3 It's ludicrous sometimes. It's like therapists aren't actual human beings, they're just huge fluff balls of excessive empathy and understanding (Also, the references psychological theories in the above imagined conversation was just satire. Obviously).

Moving on. Another concept this book touched upon was the coexistence of fear and love. Can we love when we fear the being whom we claim to love? Do you really love your parents if you are afraid of them? Mariana's supervisor told her that love cannot exist when there is fear, which, somewhere, is true. I do not love that which I fear. Or at least not fully. But then, when it comes to God, do we not say 'Fear God', so that we do not do wrong? (getting theological here) On some level, I think that perhaps it's wrong to instigate people to fear God. Because fear drives you to do the things which you don't want to do just because you want to save your own ass (or actually, maybe because you love that which you fear, in a twisted paradoxical kind of way). You fear God because you don't want to incur His wrath. But when you love God, you do the things He has ordained out of good will, out of desire to please your Lord. When you love your parents, you do good to bring them happiness in spite of yourself. But when you fear your parents, you do good (for some time) so that you don't have to face their anger or disappointment.

So, can love and fear truly coexist? 

Maybe.

Overall, it was a nice little book, gripping enough, though not the best thing I've ever read. I was looking for a short read that would hold my attention till the end without too much intensity and it turned out to be the perfect book.

Spoilers

Alex has a thing for cheating spouses initially painted as unerring angels. The Maiden's plot twist was that Mariana's husband, whose memory she holds on to so tightly because she loved him so much and because he never wronged her to her face, was that he was actually a cheater who was secretly sleeping with her niece. The niece in question, Zoe, turned out to be the killer. I would not have doubted Zoe had I not read The Silent Patient. But Michaelides' ideas are pretty straightforward once you get the hang of him. The only thing I did not anticipate was that Sebastian was a cheater. Although if you look at his first novel where Gabriel was a cheater, it's not that surprising.

The thing that bothered me was Henry's absolute uselessness to the plot. Like why was he there? Why did he even exist when his obsession with Mariana led to nothing? It started well with Henry, but then it felt like his character just lost meaning and was cast aside without any thought. I would've preferred it if Henry's and Fred's characters were somehow merged together. It would've made for a more seamless plot

Anyway, that's all loves.

Toodles xo