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Summary: Who is REALLY the patient here? Another gem by McGrath!
Review: You can't trust McGrath's narrators, who always pursue their own insidious agendas. This fact is never more obvious than in "Asylum". The reader gets the story of Stella and her forbidden love affair with mental patient Edgar Stark only through the narrator, Peter's, eyes. Never once do Stella or Edgar get a chance to tell their own story. Peter - the psychiatrist, the professional, the "old friend" - is most poised to take unfair advantage of the story and the situation, knowing full well he of all people should not be "healing" Stella. And he, of all people, should not be telling the reader this tragic tale, injecting into his words hidden jealousy and an emotional pathology that is fascinating and repelling once you realize what he is doing. In the end, Stella trumps Peter but one is left wondering: who here needs "Asylum"? The patients? Or the doctor ..
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Summary: Deception, betrayal and innocence lost.
Review: Asylum was more than a story of the destructive decline of a woman and her obsession. It forced the reader to look in a mirror and reflect on our own prisons and demons. In the protected world of doctors and phychiatrist one of their own was was taken from them and used against the very men who loved her. Stella, and eventually her child, fell prey to forces that were out of her control, yet somehow controlled by her. Stella and Edgar deceived everyone including themselves. The tragic ending of an innocent life is another example of our own innocence lost. I will remember this book for a long time
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Summary: Strange love story.
Review: The characters in this tangled web of insanity inspired love, bring passion and depth to the concept of obsessive love. The narrator relates the tale with his own obsessions mixed in and the ultimate outcome is unbelievable. An engrossing and startling story of desire and love-madness
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Summary: The fascination of obsession and madness
Review: Stella is the beautiful intelligent wife of Max Raphael, a staff psychiatrist at a mental hospital in rural England. Max is a stuffy sort of fellow, not in the least a match in wit or charm of Stella, but, ah, along comes the enigmatic sculptor Edgar Stark, who is a patient at the hospital ...as well he should be after cutting off his wife's head after imagining her many affairs. The sexual tension between Edgar and Stella becomes what sexual tension usually becomes, and their lives are never the same..well, hers anyway.
A wonderfully fascinating dark novel.
Rating:
Summary: It's all about Stella
Review: As a gothic horror story, "Asylum" succeeds on the level of its atmospheric intensity. However, the brooding sense of foreboding that just builds and builds doesn't quite lead anywhere. In the absence of any discernable climax to the plot, the reader experiences none of the cathartic release he expects from the denouement in a novel of this genre. The subject is clearly Stella, the psychiatrist's (Max's) wife. The other characters are just wallpaper and background noise. Whether intended or not, the author has left me with the impression that her fatal obsession with Edgar, the hospital's murderously dangerous patient, has in fact nothing to do with Edgar. Edgar is simply the catalyst for the release of Stella's pent up frustration and hatred for her dead emotional life with Max. It could well have been anyone else. The disappointment is that Edgar started off as a fascinating Hannibal Lector type character until McGrath lost interest in him midway and decided to write him out of the plot. Well, almost. You keep waiting and waiting for his return but he doesn't quite show up. The use of Peter as first person narrator is, on the other hand, an eerily effective technical devise. You keep guessing at his possible entanglement in the whole sordid business and this works wonders in keeping up the suspense. Whatever the novel's shortcomings, McGrath makes up for the small disappointment of its underwhelming ending with his spellbinding way with words. He is such an accomplished writer I would gladly read anything by him anyday. His prose is smoooth as silk and always magnificently crafted. Not quite the stunner I expected but still, a worthy and enjoyable read.
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Summary: Stunning depiction of the obsession & delusion we call love
Review: Rich in insight and fomenting of anger, this brooding depiction of the lengths to which one might go in a search for meaning through the madness of love is devastating, catastrophic, heartbreaking, and real. In doomed Stella, blind, rigid Max, and helpless little Charlie we see examples of the ravages desire plays amid the torrent of our lives.
A crushing statement about the delusion which hides within us all.
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Summary: Tragic Story, Beautiful Writing
Review: "Asylum" was my first Patrick McGrath novel and it's so good it's definitely turned me into a total "McGrath junkie." I fully intend on reading every work of fiction this very talented man has published. "Asylum" is the story of beautiful but damaged Stella Raphael, a woman who, it would seem, has much to live for. Stella's decisions, however, as well as her solutions to her problems, are far from the best and she caues herself and those around her both tragedy and pain. This is a book that could have so easily spilled over into melodrama...but it didn't. McGrath's cool, highly-controlled writing keeps this book believable even at its most tragic points. I think readers should be warned that even though "Asylum" is a masterpiece, it is a bleak, dark and depressing book. The darkness is not only unrelieved, it grows as one reads on to the ultimate, shattering end. Readers who need something lighter or a book with a "feel good" ending should probably choose something else. While "Asylum" is a deeply psychological novel, it isn't at all claustrophobic. McGrath's choice of an (almost) impartial narrator (and one who isn't quite reliable) keeps us from ever entering Stella's mind or the mind of Edgar Stark, the madman who so cunningly takes advantage of Stella's vulnerability. McGrath's masterful use of locale only adds to the rich atmosphere of this book. We meet Stella in high summer in the gentle landscape of southern England when she seems to "have it all." Her seedy affair and descent into depression occur in Cockney London (within the sound of Big Ben). A tragic turing point occurs on the desolate Welsh moors and the book concludes back where it began just as the chestnut trees are beginning to blossom, bringing everything full circle. I really can't praise this book highly enough. If you like dark, melancholy, tragic novels, psychological studies (without all the psychological jargon) and wonderful, controlled writing, you will probably love "Asylum" just as much as I did.
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Summary: Very intelligent gothic
Review: This is the most subtly layered of all of McGrath's books. I like them all -- I love his gothic style and deadpan humor. There is a feminist theme in this one, as the questionable narrator leads us through his vision of an intense (obsessional) love affair -- which also illuminates the complete subjugation of the woman to possession and object...or perhaps that's just how he sees her...
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