Asylum

Rating:
Summary: She's (Really) Come Undone
Review: It's not often a reader has the opportunity to be swept into a novel such as this. Although the violence of this novel is almost entirely on a psychological level, the damage the characters are able to unleash in their own lives is mortifying. McGrath skillfully weaves a life for his characters, and then destroys it one thread at a time (in a manner that is entirely believable).

Rating:
Summary: a haunting, gothic tale of obession and love
Review: Asylum is a vivid tale of love and obsession between two people who cannot live together but cannot live apart either. Stella is a free spirit who is drawn to Edgar because he represents everything she has ever wanted but could never have. The love story between these two is both mesmerizing and unforgettable. This is a novel you will never forget-- a must read.

Rating:
Summary: The book was driving me insane.
Review: I was so anxious to get to the end - I kept hoping for some suspense. The book just didn't deliver. The ranting and groaning and whining just went on...and on...and on... I could have written a better ending: I kept waiting for Edgar to show up. Or at least Max to go berserk. Or how about the whole cycle starting again with Stella dancing with the phychiatrist... Nothing. I only felt sympathy for innocent Charlie - all the other character got on my nerves. Stella was an alcoholic cat on a hot tin roof, Max was a spineless dweeb (I could see Bill Pullman playing him in the movie version - if, God forbid, there was one). Unfortunalety, I can't blame the decision to read this on anyone - I stumbled upon this book in the bookstore and thought the cover was cool.

Rating:
Summary: Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places
Review: What occurs if the people treating the mentally ill are more damaged than their patients? Patrick McGrath's book explores the worst that a community has to offer. In many ways it reminded me of David Lynch's BLUE VELVET because directly beneath the surface lurks tremendous violence and horror.

Rating:
Summary: Delicious study of obsession and depression
Review: I found the relationships in this novel fascinating, especially the ones between the author/psychiatrist, Peter Cleave, and his two patients - first, Edgar Stark and then, Stella Raphael. The writing was somewhat deadpan which is the only factor that kept me from rating this as a 10. However, the writing did add to the tone - depression, hopelessness and the banality of the surroundings. I found myself fascinated with Peter Cleave's complete "surrender" to Stella's psyche and wondering, wondering .......,what would Edgar have done to Stella??!

Rating:
Summary: No good.
Review: This is overblown, terribly written, pompous English-style writing. You've seen this befire, and better'Spellbound', for one (High Anxiety, for another!) The whole book is actually a short story, drawn out agonizingly, redunant as can be, wooden, boring. I finished it for a reading group. Please don't be taken in by the reviews. This is no good.

Rating:
Summary: Very heady reading but sparse character definition
Review: I liked this book. Notwithstanding the fact that I read 2/3 of it, put it down for about 6 months, then pushed through to the exciting climax. McGrath does a superior job of analyzing the characters. We know how they are ticking. What is sort of unclear is what kind of people they are. I get the feeling that he thinks the reader will get too depressed if he knows these people too intimately, their bared and battered pysches notwithstanding. Everyone in this book is pathetically screwed up, but after what I would categorize as brilliant analyses of each individual, they move about a Conradian swamp of quiet desperation, rising to surface in violent actions or sexual thrusts to blot out their obvious and complete aloneness in this world. Still, the mind games played and the unstudied responses of persons trying to study each other (and here the studier can become the studied very quickly) are well worth the reader's attention. I want to read more of this guy. He also shows us that you don't need 70 million pages of text to get the point of the story accross. A welcome breeze when one is forced to ponder other, stuffier psychoanalytic works. A smart, crisp book that makes up for lack of character development with highly insightful, penetrating looks into very troubled minds.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent view of the dark side of a love relationship
Review: This novel gives an interesting insite to the other side of a relationship. It shows that there are other kinds of abuse than the physical that hits the headlines. Stella experiences something different than storybook romance with her affair and is probably finding something more like what is really experienced than today's fiction often portrays. This book touches on the issues of obsession, depression, and real life experience that can be brought on in life's situations. The descriptions bring the emotions home but somehow do not leave the reader in the depressed state that Stella finds herself in. Interesting insite into life well written to keep the attention of the reader.

Rating:
Summary: Dull, predictable
Review: The lack of character development and plot was disappointing. The prose read like a clinical report. I'm sure that's what the author was going for when he used the doctor as the narrator, but it lacked suspense. Predictable and boring.

Rating:
Summary: what's the fuss about?
Review: The characters are wooden, and the writing even more so. We never understand why on earth Stella is attracted to what's-his-name, much less why anyone would be attracted to her. The problem isn't that the narrator is untrustworthy -- so was the narrator of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, but that was a compelling novel -- but that the author himself seems to have the attitude, 'Now that I have an idea for a plot, why waste time coming up with some three-dimensional characters to execute it when I have these cardboard cut-outs all ready to go?" The overall effect is juvenile in the extreme, like a Dick and Jane book set in an asylum. The only thing that kept me awake and turning the pages was annoyance