I first discovered Patrick McGrath in 1988 with his often overlooked and under-appreciated short story collection, Blood and Water and Other Tales, and became a huge fan of his from then on. In 1990, I read his best book to date, The Grotesque. Both, are amazing pieces of Gothic fiction. Back in those days it was very difficult to find quality writers following in the footsteps of Edgar Allan Poe, especially those who were able to make their own unique imprint and capable of breaking new ground. I was delving deep into Poe, Lovecraft, M.R. James, Henry James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, Algernon Blackwood, and many others when, I got a strong urge to search out modern writers who might be doing some of the same things with their storytelling. And that's how I stumbled across two writers that stood out from the rest of the pack: Thomas Ligotti and Patrick McGrath.Ligotti is known more for telling Lovecraftian tales that are connected as much to dreams as they are to curious realities. McGrath is doing something altogether different. Patrick McGrath is a writer of immense literary powers. Every sentence feels right and natural in its conception. This in itself can be good or bad. Bad you say? Yes. It can be bad and a bit offputtiing when the power of the word is more impactful than the story itself. Even more common today is the power of strong likeable characters over the story over the writers gift with a pen. Because I like many different voices, I feel that nearly all published writers I'm interested in have different gifts, and mattering on my mood, can fall under the spell of any one of them. However, so it's clear, Patrick McGrath is a writer's writer. And certainly not for all tastes. Further, he's not going to be selling out and writing the next book to be developed into a blockbuster Hollywood scare and share movie. True, a couple of his books have been developed into moderately successful movies, but, most likely, they're none you've probably heard of.I think it's writers like McGrath that can more commonly write books that are either a huge hit or miss. A contrast to author's who's expectant style is always comfortably familiar, full of characters and a world that are always there for you to sit down with, just like old familiar friends sitting in your living room watching TV with you...and so it's a no-brainer you can rest easy and enjoy. McGrath may even be an acquired taste, though not for me. I liked him immediately. That may be because I started off with the right book.But, on to this one.Asylum starts off rekindling the fires of a prose I'm immediately drawn to, even though its conclusion was more like a slowgoing moth to a flame.:) The brilliant interplay of the dialogue, and cast of characters, pulled me in, as well as the intricacies of the plot set up. I think the story synopsis details it very accurately: In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting--a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Beautiful and headstrong, Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant and magnetic sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage.But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues--a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.Back then, I never read all the way through the details on the back cover or any book description too deeply because my Sherlock Banana brain was always rushing to story possibilities and conclusions before I even read the dang thing! I purchased Asylum at my favorite bookstore in the entire galaxy, The Dark Carnival in Berkeley, CA, and a store employee (definitely not Jack, the quiet, brilliant clerk/owner), who, misinformed me that Asylum was "..like a Dr. Lecter love story set in a mental institution." Well. It's not. And, he wasn't even close! It's nothing like that. Not even remotely. That would make for a cool book though!I thought it started off amazingly and there was no doubt it was anything but a 5 star level book. Until about halfway through, that is. After that, it wore out a lot of it's welcome and its warm fire started petering out, but, luckily, there was just enough warmth left for me to stay with it. It originally had a lot going for it, including plot sequences that were perfectly realized but, just none of them ended up going where I wanted them to go. Nor was the story nearly as captivating once the characters started meandering into madness. Funny enough, every line in the book was masterful. I just thought it lost it's power in the second half, leading to a mostly predictable conclusion, which can only be expected if you've read the back cover description. Predictability doesn't necessarily mean I'm not going to like it as a whole. I mean, I knew where Star Wars was headed and loved every second of it, all the way up to everybody clapping hands as our heroes got awarded -- *note: except for Chewie :( -- Doesn't bother me to know where a book's going. This one just didn't go to a place I was interested in. It all wraps up in perfect late 1940's film style (though it's set in 1959) and is a good book. It's just not a great book. In 2005, Asylum, was made into a movie. I think it might be better that way because you'd be able to see and feel the passion coming through living, breathing, characters. I haven't seen it.I suggest reading The Grotesque if you want to get your feet wet in Patrick McGrath's pool. If you're more a fan of supernatural fiction, ranging from fantasy, to sci-fi, to horror, or a fan of short stories, go get Blood and Water and Other Tales. Read Asylum only after you've read his better books. * If you do purchase this book, there are many printed versions. I suggest the one I bought. It has a black cover with a gold gate - like a golden gate that opens to the dark depths of the asylum itself. It has a tiny window frame where you can see the word Asylum trapped behind it. Opening to the very first page, behind this window, is a photographic depiction of the asylum hospital. I also found that many of the quoted reviews inside the book and on the cover were fun to read.
"Stella Raphael's story is one of the saddest I know," intones Dr. Peter Cleave, the senior psychiatrist in the mental hospital central to Asylum by Patrick McGrath. Asylum is a story of obsession.Stella and her husband Max have moved outside London for Max's job. Hoping to eventually become superintendent of the facility, Max is quite involved in the asylum's day-to-day activities, and the couple's home is on the property. Max has big plans, including renovating the conservatory and gardens of the home. Some of the better-behaved patients are allowed on work teams, and Edgar Stark, a former sculptor, is given the task of carpentry work in the conservatory. Charlie, Stella and Max's son, is fascinated with the work and the gardens and the pond, spending many of his days outside. When Stella encounters Edgar while outside with Charlie, she is drawn to him. Edgar doesn't look insane. He is polite and talented. The two become friendly, and Stella, lacking passion in her own marriage, falls in love with Edgar.Edgar Stark is Cleave's patient, and Edgar's intelligence fascinates the doctor. Edgar murdered his wife and brutalized her body after suspecting her of multiple infidelities for many years. Edgar feels completely justified in his actions, and Cleave counts Edgar one of his more interesting patients because of this. It is only when Cleave observes subtle changes in Stella that he suspects the impossible. When Edgar escapes from the facility, Max and Stella both come under scrutiny, leading to a chain of events that is both disturbing and engrossing.McGrath's Asylum is an elegant novel. Gothic and dark, it explores the nature of love and obsession as well as mental illness. The novel is, in many ways, timeless, and particularly, it was some time before I could have stated with any assurance the time period in which Asylum is set. Late 1950s, to be exact.Cleave is narrating the novel, yes, but he is doing so after discussions with Stella, after something has apparently gone badly wrong, and the impending sense of doom only adds to the novel's complexity. Not that Asylum is a mystery. It isn't. Edgar murdered his wife. He escapes from the asylum. Stella goes to him. Nothing surprising here. When Edgar begins exhibiting erratic behavior, though, she runs. However, the story doesn't take the reader into the places you'd think it would. Stella is not repentant. Instead, she feels torn from her lover and sorrowful that she ever suspected his behavior. Willing, even after knowing the full extent of his crime, to go to him and be with him, and Cleave notes this: At root, I suppose, in spite of everything she loved him, or told herself she did, and women are stubborn in this regard. She had made her choice, she had gone to him willingly, and it was unthinkable to run home because he was ill and his illness robbed him of responsibility. What did surprise me was that she could ignore the proliferating signals that an act of violence was imminent.Just as Edgar seems to relish the idea of bedding a psychiatrist's wife, so too does Stella enjoy her role as caretaker. Edgar is ill; therefore, Stella must take care of him, even if it means abandoning her husband and her child. The child she increasingly grows to resent because he is part of his father and therefore part of the imagined trap she feels exists around her.If you have not yet picked up on it, this is an unreliable narrator speaking to another unreliable narrator. Both Stella and Cleave are obsessed with Stark, Cleave referring to Stark as "my Edgar" many times, a point of pride that Edgar is his patient. So we know what the characters intend to tell us, emphasizing that we never truly know the nature of anyone, much less someone with a mental illness.The nature of these obsessions is, of course, destructive, and everyone involved hurtles toward that destruction in ways both expected and unexpected. I listened to this on audiobook, and I usually stick to my time on the elliptical only to listen to audiobooks. This was one, however, that after a certain point in Asylum, I had to put my headphones on for the rest of the day, no matter what else I was doing to absorb it all. Unlike Cleave, I don't think Stella's is the saddest story I know, and I had very little sympathy for her outside her feeling of entrapment, but I was still completely captivated by her ability to dismiss all rational thought in the face of the man she loves.The narration by Ian McKellen is absolutely first rate, and Asylum is a story that will sink in slowly, insidiously, forcing you to think about the characters and their decisions long after the end.
Do You like book Asylum (1998)?
This has been sitting on the bottom of a huge pile of books in my bedroom that topples over every time one of my dogs flops down for a nap. I'm getting sick of picking them up and will read them from the bottom up. It's like a Survivor Challenge as I wiggle out the bottom book without causing the whole lot to topple upon my head. I bought it five years ago at a library sale according to the withdrawn library stamp. Shameful.Psychiatrist Peter Cleave tells a supposedly sordid tale of a former patient, love affairs gone terribly wrong, sexual obsession and madness but alas he’s such a boring fellow the story has no emotional appeal, no sense of drama, and no interesting tidbits to savor and drool over. He skims over the good stuff and me, being the fool I am, continued to read waiting for my interest to become engaged and hoping to feel something for these screwed up people. Alas, I remain a fool. Doc Peter works in an asylum for the criminally insane which happens to be within walking distance of the home of their newly hired superintendent, his beautiful but bored housewife Stella and their young son Charlie. When an inmate named Edgar is hired on to do some work on their grounds Stella gets all hot and bothered by his sweltering looks and big brawny chest and begins to romanticize his criminal history. She starts to believe he only murdered his ex love because he loved her so very deeply. Awwww, isn't that the sweetest? So I assumed bad things were going to happen and was looking forward to an emotionally disturbing read about a dumb housewife and a hunky headcase but I was so bored I could barely get through it. This could have been an interesting gothic-y tale but the problem for me was Peter’s first person narration. It makes the book feel a bit stuffy and distances me from the people he’s prattling on and on about. Because the book is told entirely from Peter’s point of view or from snippets he gleaned from interviews with Edgar and Stella, who withheld all interesting tidbits it seems, we are only told the unexciting parts of the story. Peter has no imagination and doesn’t fill in the blanks very well either. Damn it all. I’m not a perv, really I’m not, but when a book jacket touts “passion” and “strange love” I expect something slightly exciting and not a whole bunch of boring accounts of day to day strolls through the garden, tedious conversations and a painfully slow and uninteresting descent into madness.I waded through countless pages waiting for something interesting to happen and honestly, for me, it never freaking did. Even when tragedy occurs I felt so distanced from the characters that there was no emotional reaction from me as a reader. And when the last revelation made by Peter is revealed I found it so ridiculously unbelievable that I wanted to scream. Finally, an emotional reaction but for all of the wrong reasons! I regret wasting several hours struggling through this book and can’t recommend it unless you’re into really boring melodramas.
—Bark's Book Nonsense
I agree with some other comments, based on the jacket you are expecting a sordid tawdry story. In reality, the events are told with a clinical psychiatrist at the helm, describing the events of his patients life and downfall as he understands them. He does skip the juicy bits, so if you're looking for smutty you will be disappointed. Literally speaking I thought it was a very good book. The author has a wonderful command of the English language and with concise writing and the detachment (or not?) of the narrator I thought it was very well put together and told from a different viewpoint then we are used to. I consider it worthwhile just from the uniqueness of this viewpoint on love and obsession and bad decisions people make without being able to see what is so clear if you just look at the facts outside of the emotions. The great success of the novel in my opinion is that their inability to see through their obsessions is believable- I never once said to myself "Oh come on! what kind of idiot would do that!". A Worthwhile and satisfying read.
—Paula
I am rating this book 2.5 stars. Almost a 3 because I was desperate to read it to the end only to find out what happens.This is described as a gothic horror, a romance, a mystery crime novel. I would categorize this book as a depressing book about obsession and selfishness.The narrator of this book is a psychiatrist at a psychiatric hospital outside of London. His main patient is Edgar Stark a psychopath who murdered his wife with the delusion that she was being unfaithful, contrary to having any physical evidence. The main character of this book is Stella the wife of superintendent Max who works at the psychiatric hospital. Within the first few weeks of moving to this grand hospital with its sprawling gardens Stella meets Edgar and an intense love affair ensues. This tryst is so obsessive it becomes apparent that neither party can survive without the other.Stella made me hate this book. She is selfish to the extreme. She is a horrible person. A horrible mom and the ending was predictable. There was no other conclusion to the story in my mind.I felt bad for Edgar. He truly was a sick individual and Stella brought that out in spades. Max was a hard working momma's boy who really didn't deserve the hand that he had been dealt, but because of his cowardliness I didn't feel sympathy. I think the person that had it the worst was the son Charlie.In the end you could see the stress the child was in having to be between his parents and siding with someone.Lastly, this story is told through the psychiatrist. Some of it is first hand accounts while others is hearsay. We as the reader can not be entirely certain that what is being told to the psychiatrist is the whole truth. At the beginning of the book the narrators says "The catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession has been a professional interest of mine for many years now." So with that being said... I wonder if at some point he helped push this affair into fruition. By staying quiet through the first half of the book knowing what was going on. It seems that he enjoyed this suffering just so he could then dissect it afterwards. I found the psychiatrist equally as disgusting as Stella the wife.If you would like to read a depressing book about the inner workings of a love affair and the horrible state it leaves a family then pick this book up. I found it upsetting and I only read it to the end in hopes Stella would get what was coming to her.
—Melissa Chung
