Rating: 
Summary: Great writing, but far from a page-turner
Review: I agree with many of my fellow readers that the writing is impeccable. The book is beautifully written. Maybe I was just needing more of a thriller...you know...the ones you read late into the night because you can't bear to stop, and the ones you hate to finish, as well. Actually, I thought I would NEVER finish this book!! I read about 2-3 books per week, but this one took 3 weeks! I would literally fall asleep after reading a few paragraphs per night, and I never had that can't-wait-to-get-back-to-it feeling. So for prose, I guess about a 4 1/2-5 and for great page-turning reading about a 1 1/2-2, so I gave it a resounding 3!
Rating: 
Summary: When madness strikes
Review: Superbly prose outlines the boundaries between insanity and reality in Asylum, Patrick Mc Grath's new novel. Asylum portrays the life of an isolated woman, whose meaningless present drives her to fall obsessively in love with one of the hospital's patients. Stella, that's her name, sails into a sea of hesitation when it comes to her plight. This hesitation eventually will become obsession, making Stella drift into the arms of insanity, abandon and self-degradation. No trace of the old Stella will remain and the horrific consequences of her deeds will haunt her life ever since. What deeds? What consequences? Those are what Asylum is about, fusing such facts into an ending so appropriate and worthy of this story. Ultra compelling story, slow though, which strikes the reader due to its veracity.
Rating:
Summary: Could Not Put It Down!
Review: This book is a real page turner! I started this book and read it straight through. I love horror, thriller and mystery novels and read several each month. I usually do not like english writers, but Patrick McGrath is on my list of must reads. His writting flows very smoothly and you don't get bogged down in the Brittish jargain.This story had me hooked from page 1. I could not believe any more could possibly happen to this poor unhappy woman when the plot would take a new twist and I was drawn even deeper into the book. I would highly recommend this book to lovers of gothic insane asylum type stories.
Rating: 
Summary: HORRIFIC and yet truly THRILLING, but how and why?
Review: I bought this book as result of an on-line recommendation. I don't really like what I'd call horror books, but I love thrillers. This was THRILLING but in a horrific way. I can't say why, though. I couldn't put it down. I am a book addict, buying up to 10-15 books in a month, I need a book that HOLDS ME. This DID IT. I'm buying another book from this author. I'm almost afraid to receive it and start reading. I wish I could find more books like it, though!
Rating:
Summary: This is a remarkable book.
Review: The author's style seems such a contrast to the story. McGrath writes consistently, smoothly, almost gently, but the story is intense and incredible. The descriptions of obsession, maddness, futility, depression, hope, and deception are vivid and penetrating. He is able to write scenes that you can visualize -- a woman sitting on the ground, filled with blackness, smoking, seeing but not seeing her son drown. This is a profound story and maybe a reminder of what can happen when one suffers from horrible depression, and when someone is unwilling or unable to reverse their focus and direction.
Rating:
Summary: A mind-tickling book. I loved it!
Review: I absolutely couldn't put this book down. I didn't want it to end. I had never heard of Patrick McGrath before reading "Asylum." He is a fine storyteller. I felt like I was there living this story (although I'm glad I wasn't). I thought I was reading about a woman obsessed with her insane lover. But come to find out the psychiatrist treating the two lovers is just as sick. I'm one of Patrick's fans now.
Rating:
Summary: An apparently weak woman cannot deny passion up to the end
Review: The character of Stella Raphael remains incredibly strong up to the tragic end of her story. To survive her wrecked marriage she lives a monotonous life in her own reality with a husband who failed her expectations and, unexpectedly, find passion in a man who lives, in his turn, in a reality of his own. She is overwhelmed by events and passion and endures everything in the belief that her passion will find a positive end. When disillusion comes, she is ready to leave everything for her idealised passion. The intensity of feelings is well expressed and the interest of the reader is kept up to the final line. A very good book. The Italian translation in the edition of Adelphi is very good.
Rating: 
Summary: UGH! I've never been so angry for wasting my time on a book!
Review: Sometimes I wonder if reviewers simply read only the first half of the book and then crank out their reviews...Because I did find the first half of the book relatively interesting with the writing and the author's ability to create an image of the scene. Stella's character development was completely unbelievable how from one moment she is an obsessed lover, to suddenly rational to irrational to...I just didn't buy it...and the narrator just started to irritate me by the end. I was extremely disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: McGrath's best book so far.
Review: `Asylum' is a dark novel, ostensibly about the doomed attraction between two people, but -- as becomes clearer and clearer the further one gets into it -- about a third person's manipulation of their relationship. A complex novel, written in seemingly limpid prose style, with multiple layers. (Kristin Scott Thomas would make a perfect Stella!)
Rating:
Summary: A psychological thriller
Review: This is a spooky novel. The narrator, a psychiatrist, recounts the sudden romance between Stella, wife of another psychiatrist, and Edgar, a sculptor confined to a mental hospital after decapitating his wife. The contrast between the narrator's tone -- cool, analytical, scientific, writing about "the catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession" -- and the torrid and potentially gruesome relationship between Stella and Edgar is striking. Also, by using the psychiatrist -- who is therapist to both Edgar and Stella -- as narrator, McGrath succesfully combines a first person narrator with the omniscience usually reserved for the third person point of view. This is a very effective literary device. McGrath also succeeds in sustaining plot, interest, and narrative drive well after Stella is "rescued" from Edgar (this happens fairly early in the book), through Stella's own unexpected psychosis, and to the suprising ending. This is a cool and soboring study of mental illness.
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