Customer Reviews

Asylum

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

"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.

A finely written psychological horror novel filled with wonderful psychobabble. Two fantastic traits about this book:

- The Freudian slant that constantly pervades the book. I never got tired of it. Every little action had so many dissections and possibilities.

- The seemingly reliable but ultimately unreliable narrator. I hope that isn't too much of a spoiler, though it's telegraphed fairly well by the middle of the book. Echoes of Poe, definitely.

I found the mad love between Edgar and Stella to be very real and very British -- all that social caste stuff fit right in with all the repression that was going on. The book never slowed down for a second, and I don't see a single thing wrong with it.

I read that Stephen King fell in love with this book so much that he adapted it for a screenplay, so expect it to come to a theater near you. There's a movie called Asylum coming out later this year (2001), I think, but that's not it. Rumor has it that this one will be starring Liam Neeson and his wife Natasha Richardson, directed by Jonathan Demme. I suppose Neeson will play Edgar the psychopathic sculptor and Richarson will play Stella the psychopathic mother; good choices. For Max, I see a slight bookish fellow -- can't think of one. Anthony Hopkins would be my man as Peter, the narrator.

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.

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.

"With Stella it was always the heart, the language of the heart."

Dr. Peter Cleave, narrator of Asylum

Beautiful Stella is married to dour forensic psychiatrist Max Raphael, who aspires to the Superintendent's position at the mental institution where he practices and resides. Against her better judgment, Stella falls in love with an inmate, the handsome, intelligent Edgar Stark. Stark, a sculptor by trade, has been incarcerated for murdering his wife and mutilating her corpse after developing the mistaken impression that she cheated on him with dozens of other men.

After an erotic encounter at the annual institutional dance, Stella and Stark begin a torrid affair. Blinded by her passion for the sculptor, Stella unwittingly helps him escape from the institution, barely avoiding the aura of scandal which envelopes the whole affair. Certain her lover would never abandon her, Stella is elated when he contacts her through an intermediary. Ignoring all warnings about his psychosis, Stella leaves her husband and young child to join Edgar underground.

Although they live in squalor, Stella is content--she spends her days posing for Stark, and her nights in his embrace. Her happiness is short lived, however, as Edgar's psychosis starts to manifest itself. He questions her comings and goings, and accuses her of sleeping with other men. Initially, she dismisses this behavior as a byproduct of his passionate nature. But, after discovering he has mutilated the bust for which she has been posing, she flees, returning to the safety of her loveless marriage.

Still, Stella cannot forget her lover. Abusive to Max, she spends her days pining for Stark, sleepwalking through her daily existence. Her depression proves fatal to her son Charlie, when, chaperoning him on a school field trip, she watches listlessly as he drowns a few yards away. Due to her inaction, Stella becomes a patient in the institution where she once held a position of high status.

The "facts" of this story are related by Peter Cleave, who, at the beginning of the narrative, tells us that "Four lives were destroyed in the process..." What we don't know, at least early on, is that Cleave considers himself one of the four, casting doubt on his objectivity. Whatever elements Cleave chose to leave out or embellish, Asylum remains at its heart a tragedy, a depressing look at a woman in thrall to her passionate nature. Stella's love for Stark comes to dominate her existence, to the exclusion of all else.

In Asylum, McGrath demonstrates why he is considered a modern master of gothic fiction. His use of a doctor as narrator establishes credibility, and eases readers into the story. Gaining our trust, McGrath drags us further and further into a labyrinth where darkness crowds out the daylight, and love is indistinguishable from madness. Stella's behavior, while difficult to fathom, makes for compelling reading, and McGrath's skillful style guarantees readers are never bored.

Max Raphael becomes the deputy superintendent of a provincial hospital for the criminally insane in 1959. He has been appointed by superintendent Jack Straffen and is going to work together with psychiatrists John Archer and Peter Cleave, the latter being the narrator of the ensuing events. Max is accompanied by his wife Stella and his son Charlie.
But soon Stella comes to despise the claustrophobic atmosphere of the mental institution and her husband Max - it was a cold and white marriage - who has a weak sexual drive and lacks the moral and physical imagination to continue to find Stella attractive and who channels his libido into his work.
It is therefore understandable that after meeting one of Peter's patients, a sculptor called Edgar Stark, she feel irresistibly attracted by his strong manliness.
But Edgar is a delusional patient who killed his wife Ruth, then cut her head and mutilated her. This was the result of an unconscious process and the product of the delusional structure of his mind to suppose his wife's infidelity. Edgar structured his sculpting around Ruth until the idealisation of her person collapsed and he developed morbid delusions about her infidelity.
One day Edgar manages to steal some of Max's clothes and absconds to London. When Peter notices that Stella has secretly visited Edgar several times in London, he tries to warn her about the dangers such a situation is bound to present, but to no avail. Stella decides to join Edgar and flees her family thus placing her life into the hands of a dangerous criminal.
The narrative structure of the novel is particularly original since it combines both events which unfold chronologically and a retrospective account or confession to Peter of Stella's relationship with Edgar. The narrative is superb and unruffled and the slowly shocking descent into the tormented depths of madness is a brilliant achievement. Few authors have shown with such elegance and restraint the extremes of mental derangement.

I picked up this book about a month ago after reading that Stephen King had written the screenplay for the upcoming Jonathan Demme film adaptation (King's first script not based on his own material). I was curious to see what the book was like.

Before I was more than a couple of pages into "Asylum," I had already been grabbed by the magnetic pull of McGrath's darkly elegant narrative style. He's quite talented at setting a gloomy mood, the kind that, if you're a fan of Poe or Lovecraft, you just can't get enough of.

The gloom that hangs over the opening pages just builds and builds as you progress through this book. There's no escape, no asylum from the psychological claustrophobia of the characters' dark minds and ruined hearts. The psychiatrist who narrates the story of Stella and Edgar's destructive love affair gone horribly wrong proves to be much less distanced from all this obsessive madness than he would like to think. I came away from the book feeling that the narrator, in his calm, balanced way of trying to proclaim his sense of reason is probably the most unbalanced of all the unbalanced characters in this book.

This book is very well written and quite perceptive. If it weren't also so damned depressing, I would have given it five stars. Still, I would recommend it to readers who like their fiction dark, brooding and psychologically compelling.

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.

"Asylum," by Patrick McGrath, is the tragic story of Stella Raphael, the wife of a psychiatrist, Max, who works in a rural mental hospital outside of London. Stella feels stultified by her dull and routinized existence. Her marriage to Max has long ago withered and died and she is emotionally distant from her ten-year-old son, Charlie.

Stella's sexual "awakening" (with a nod to Kate Chopin) occurs when she embarks on a tempestuous affair with a mental patient, Edgar Stark, who had previously murdered and mutilated his wife in a paranoid and jealous rage. This torrid affair endangers not only Stella's family life and her position in society, but her sanity, as well.

McGrath explores some of the same ground that Kate Chopin did in the aforementioned "The Awakening". What happens to a woman who feels like an ornament, and for whom taking care of household, husband and family isn't quite enough? Like the heroine of "The Awakening," Stella starts to inhabit a fantasy world and she becomes delusional in her thinking. Her deterioration ultimately has disastrous consequences for herself and for her family.

Another theme of "Asylum" is the shortcomings of psychiatry. The psychiatrists in this novel, including Max, Peter (his colleague and the narrator of the novel), and Jack, the superintendent of the asylum, all come across as clueless bureaucrats who are incapable of curing anyone. Furthermore, McGrath depicts all the men in this novel as insensitive clods who try to exploit Stella for their own gratification.

"Asylum" is not an easy book to read. Stella's behavior is extremely off-putting, and it is hard to sympathize with her. However, "Asylum" does hold the reader's interest, in spite of its shortcomings. McGrath is extremely skilled at vividly describing Sheila's psyche, which is a frightening emotional roller coaster without any brakes. "Asylum" is extremely depressing, but it does plumb the darker side of human nature very effectively.

"Asylum" is a terrific book, and I'm sure it will make a terrific movie.

This is the story of the wife of a deputy superintendent of a mental hospital (as told by a family friend/hospital colleague). The wife falls passionately in love with a mental patient and seems to be completely out of control as a result. Nothing drives her but this passion. The passion eventually destroys everyone around her.

The narrator of the story, who you grow to trust and respect deeply, turns out to be possibly as passtionately obsessed as the woman.

Bottom line: A page-turning thriller.