Asylum

Rating:
Summary: The Machineries of Madness
Review: The gothic novel isn't dead; it's just been floundering. In Asylum, Patrick McGrath follows the success of his earlier works--The Grotesque and Spider--with Asylum, a carefully wrought novel that combines all the traditional elements of gothicism with a modern understanding of the machineries of madness.

Steadily saturated with a building sense of foreboding, Asylum is a fine modern addition to the gothic tradition, well worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: I wish he'd go back to horror...
Review: Nine years and four novels after taking the world hostage with _Blood and Water and Other Stories_, one of the most fiercely original collections of short fiction this century, Patrick McGrath has calmed down somewhat. Okay, he's calmed down a lot. Rather than giving us fly nightclubs and angels whose bodies are rotting away from the inside, we have a marriage on the rocks, a psychotic lover, and the analyst always willing to lend a hand. Max is being groomed to be the asylum's next superintendent. This, of course, makes him utterly boring. His wife Stella is, of course, bored. That is, until she meets Edgar Stark, a patient at the hospital whose attractive powers are almost supernatural. The two of them get locked into a tumultuous affair, and the predictable chaos ensues. Problem is, it ensues... rather slowly.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this style of book at this particular time, but it seemed to me that McGrath could have done the same work in about seventy pages less than he did. He does, as usual, push the envelope about two paces beyond where you think it can't possibly take anymore without tearing, and there's no denying that once the story gets off the ground, the adventures of Stella, Edgar, Max, Peter, and their friends and intimates is as gripping as "The eROTic Potato" (if not as graphic or disturbing) . It's just that the story seems to taxi for an awfully long time before getting clearance to fly. Interestingly, as well, it picks up momentum even after what would seem to be the climax in any normal tragic novel. McGrath has a few twists left in store even then, and the pace gets faster and faster until you hit the last page and the brick wall that comes with it-- "it's OVER?"

Perhaps this was an experiment in form. After turning it over in my head for hours, that's the best I can come up with. The writing was pure McGrath, the characters well-drawn, the plot wicked, but the form left a little something to be desired. All in all, I must say I liked the other two McGrath novels I've read (I'm still missing Spider) better-- but that's not to say this isn't still above average given its many strong points.

Rating:
Summary: Contemporary Gothic Tension
Review: I've had Asylum sitting on my "to read" shelf for a few years. I finally got around to reading it and I was pleased by the novel. McGrath is a talented writer with a talent for maintaining just the right level of tension despite the lack of much action - Asylum is more cerebral than action oriented. There is a definite gothic feel to the novel and McGrath never allows the reader to escape the forboding feeling he puts forth in the opening pages.

Rating:
Summary: Mechanical
Review: I purchased Asylum a few weeks ago at a local bookstore with great expectations that this novel would be a dangerous and mysterious plunge into the mind of a deranged psychopathic killer. I envisioned gothic horror replete with graphic violence, rivers of blood and a journey down the dark corridors of dementia. Instead I found myself wallowing in a simplistic plot laced with mundane, mechanical characters. This novel was certainly not a "page turner" except perhaps that the reader, anticipating a sudden revelation, ironic twist or shuddering finale, plods through the muck only to be sorely disappointed. McGrath's writing style quells surprises. Max Raphael is a poor excuse for a husband. He is so concerned about his professional image and social status that he indulges his wife's aberrant behavior, dismissing her sordid affair with Edgar Stark and attendant alcoholism as an illness, a bout of depression from which he hoped she would recover. He over controls justifiable anger. Instead of lashing out and commanding respect, he placates Stella and winds up the object of her derision. Stella's obsession with Stark is not all that unusual given her pathological promiscuity. She has sex with just about every male character in the novel except her husband of course! To dispassionately stand by and witness her son Charlie drown in a bog on a barren Welsh heath is somewhat plausible given her state of mind, but Peter Cleave's erudite rationalization of her negligence in preventing the tragedy as displaced anger against Stark for their estrangement seems ludicrous. McGrath paints this climactic scene (the high point of the story) with the flair of a statistician. The narrative is dissociated and apathetic. What should elicit a powerful emotional response from the reader, reads like the pages from a dry technical manual. Because Stella needs stability in her life and Charlie is her only link to normalcy in an otherwise loveless marriage, she returns home after her affair with Stark (hiding in the shadows of a London slum following his escape) soured. Peter Cleave's alacrity to retire and marry Stella as a therapeutic adjunct to her recovery made me wonder who was crazier, the doctor or the patient! This man was not just a colleague to Max Raphael but a close personal friend. Yet he unscrupulously manipulates Edgar, Stella and Max in a cold, calculating way to serve his own designs. Ironically she dupes him in the end. At least there is some saving grace to the story! All in all a terse plot combined with surreal characters and unenthusiastic style conspire to detract from the potential of this novel as a captivating exploration into the dark regions of the human psyche.

Rating:
Summary: vintage McGrath, yet realistic..
Review: It's hard for me to give an objective review of any material by McGrath since I think his writing style is so excellent and remarkably compact. However beyond style, his material is always interesting (especially for those who enjoy the macabre).

In a very broad sense, Asylum is like Dr. Haggard's Disease from a woman's perspective. A middle-aged woman is "possessed" by an uncontrollable love for someone who is rather .. unlovable (as most homicidal psychopaths perhaps are), yet she is fully aware of this possession and its inevitable outcome. Asylum re-enforces the notion that love is blind, which in this case is a very bad thing.

Unlike McGrath's other novels, Asylum presents a completely plausible story (and therefore, in my opinion, it is not a gothic novel). So it should have wider appeal than his other works. I also encourage readers of Asylum to buy Dr. Haggard's Disease, which is actually a more focused and "intense" read (..from a male perspective).

Rating:
Summary: Things are not what they seem here
Review: This story of a compulsive sexual relationship between aninmate of a psychiatric hospital and the wife of one of the doctors isa disturbing blend of serious fiction and psychologicalthriller. Narrated by another of the hospital's psychiatrists, the story is told third hand and in that dispassionate "clinical" voice one might associate with a shrink. The doctor has the details because he "treated" both (the other doctor's wife had become a patient after helping her lover - a criminally insane sculptor - to escape).

This is a fascinating story, told in just the right tone of voice. Patrick McGrath's writing style is perfect for the point of view he chooses here and a lot of the pleasure of the book is gained just from the sound of the doctors dry and off beat remarks, where there is always more than meets the eye. END

Rating:
Summary: Subtle, clinical, madness that slowly builds
Review: I like the idea of the gothic thriller: dank, roaming vistas, be they an insane asylum or windswept North Wales landscapes, coupled w/ depressed, furtive movements by the main players. Asylum seemed to hold that promise when I saw it. This is my first McGrath book, but won't be the last. The narrative was taut and controlled, but also interestingly languid, one could sense the mental disintegration and exhaustion on all players as the story wore on and slowly rose to its crescendo. I caught myself thinking of Poe's "the Fall of the House of Usher" a couple times later in the story as the landscapes were described [black pools of water, barren landscapes] and the characters inner turmoil prodded their own heightened sense of self-awareness to come bubbling up. Considering the fact that most of the characters are either psychiatrists, or immediately influenced by them [wives, patients] one can see where they would have the vocabulary and insight to adequately describe their mania. Make no mistake, this is Stella's story. The madman Edgar Stark is along for the ride, but isn't fleshed out to make him a star ala Hannibal [the current read]. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it for those seeking a subtle, sublime entry into this genre.

Rating:
Summary: "Disturbing" is an understatement.
Review: This book'll get under your skin and stay there for quite a while. Somethimes the scariest feeling in the world is that "uncomfortable" feeling that things aren't quite right and, no matter how hard anybody tries to set them right, they will never be. A person who'll abandon their family is, in many ways, more frightening than one who'll eat them.

Rating:
Summary: Utterly haunting and beautiful
Review: Patrick McGrath's portrayal of the obsessive affair between Stella and Edgar grips you from the beginning and doesn't let go, even after you have put the book down. You are still haunted by the two lovers and the destruction they cause to everyone around them. Patrick McGrath gives us a rare look at the human heart and how obsessive love can twist and shatter it to pieces. A brilliant piece of work!

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, suitable for the highly literate.
Review: Asylum brings us into a world of Freudian reasoning and morbid passions. While many people claim the novel to be poorly written or too 'British,' I strongly disagree. If someone is to read literature written in English than why must one expect it to be Americanized? It's dissapointing that so many who have reveiwed this book are completely stuck in their ignorant and ethnocentric ways. Asylum is not a book for the Stephen King crowd; it takes a little bit of intellect to fully comprehend. I can see that it would be a dissapointment to the person used to reading mass produced, eighth-grade-reading-leval mysteries, but if you have an adult vocabulary and a deep fascination for the clockwork of the human psyche, than this novel will change your life.