Customer Reviews

Memoirs From The Asylum

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Many books take on the subject of mental illness, many more are set in psychiatric wards, but usually these are narratives that recount a single story or perspective. What distinguishes Memoirs from the Asylum is the fact that the reader is introduced not only to individuals in a mental institution but the larger community of the institutionalized lifestyle. Ken Weene introduces his reader to numerous, dynamically-drawn characters that absolutely come alive on the page, not only through their private battles but how these patients interact and perceive the institution they've been relegated to. This is a powerful portrayal of what life is in an institutionalized setting and how corruption can and does exist for some residents. He brings up real problems that are often not discussed, and humanizes his characters in a way that few authors have been able to. I hope this book gets the attention it deserves because it is truly an eye-opening tale(s) that demands a reader's attention and empathy for those who are often shunned or ignored by society. Read it.

Kenneth Weene's Memoirs from the Asylum is thought provoking, and at times confusing. Only because of the subject matter. Ken Weene takes you inside three very poignant characters. Marylin, a catatonic, Jamul a child of the state, and Dr. Ambrose a new resident trying to make a difference in a place, where the employees do not care for the patients or the treatment they receive to keep them "quiet" and under control. It is a riveting tale from the prospective of a self-proclaimed schizophrenic. It makes you question the treatment of the mentally insane. Tragic at times and enlightening at others. This book is not for the faint of heart. It can be graphic and disturbing, but necessary I believe for the subject matter. It is an enormous challenge to portray the mind and thoughts of the mentally insane, but you find yourself wondering, are we all that far from falling over the edge of sanity. Like a good novel it invokes in me the passion to try to help these characters. Mental illness is so misunderstood, but Kenneth Weene does a wonderful job at trying to inform the reader of the depth of that darkness.

Review done by Angela for alchemyofscrawl

Kenneth Weene's Memoirs from the Asylum is a vivid account of life in a mental institution, so vivid that the reader may begin to feel it necessary to join the inmates. The stories come from the minds of those in the asylum, both the patients and the professionals. We are drawn into another world, that of the disoriented minds who have realities far from the reality of our own world. Yet we are captivated and join the perceptions of those who tell us their truths. These are not pleasant ones -- sexual images abound, in distortions of what society would name as acceptable. Yet the adventures of those whose lives have been damaged by environment or interior illnesses are unforgettable. At the end, the author explains his purpose in writing this book. He himself has been professionally involved in the institutional environment where the mentally ill exist with their fantasies and the mistreatment that is their lot in such places.
This is not an easy book to read but it is one that speaks truth from the institutions of our day. It could be viewed as a metaphor for our world.

Kenneth Weene's Memoirs from the Asylum is powerful, moving and emotional. At times I felt like I was locked up in the mental institution and had become a patient. It felt like I had become one of his characters.

Weene's writing is so powerful there is no way the reader can hide from the pain and emotions of the characters. Be prepared to become one with Marilyn, Jack, and Mitch. Be prepared to be outraged at the treatment you receive.

Memoirs from the Asylum pulls no punches. It makes the reader question the way we treat mentally ill patients.

I couldn't help wondering who determines whom gets the keys to the Asylum. Some of the "so-called" sane people who are supposed to help those with crippled and drugged minds are far worse off than those they care for.

This is what good story-telling is supposed to do. It made me think and feel and empathize with the characters. It made me want to join a patient's rights organization. It makes me want to get involved and help those who are lost in the Asylum.

Michael Davis, author God's Vacation

Home is where truth is found, held up to the light, no matter the darkness of the place it inhabits. Kenneth Weene's Memoirs from the Asylum is an unlikely place but that is where we don't mind staying because of the passion of the people that live there.
This is the book Ken Kesey did not write. The poetry and profundities flow from a lifetime of good and dark visions and keen intellectual insights. Memoirs is a novel I did not want to end. When it did, I felt that all familiar constant companion called dread lurking in that lost crack somewhere on the other side of the mirror. A haunting, literary achievement where patients and providers seem to trade places with truths and day visions, Weene's Asylum is the turf for a gritty grid-iron war. We don't want to admit it is also our own constant landscape in our daily battle to land right-side-up, but it is. Told often with dark humor, perhaps too much graphic descriptions I would rather not have read, the humanity of the overall vision makes this a haunting, unforgettable work and a distinctive addition to what really goes on in the night shift of our souls.
robert rubenstein, author
Ghost Runners
on amazon.com and ATTM Press.

`I was scared of trying things that I couldn't do. I'm one of those people who rehearses for getting up in the morning. I go through the sequence: what I'm going to wear, which tasks I'm going to complete, even what I'm going to think about. If something seems too difficult, screw it. If there's a bunch of too difficult things on the roster, well, screw the whole day; I stay in my bed - my safe, unchallenging bed With my face turned to the wall and my knees hugged securely to my breast, I journey inward - to the safety of my within.'
`Safety is a relative thing. In the bigger picture, my life went from bad to worse. But, I wasn't in `Nam. I wasn't failing at a job. I wasn't getting into trouble with people. I was simply being schizophrenic. Disabilitied, Social Securitied, and indulged by parents hiding their loathing and frustration. Being schizophrenic isn't so bad - at least not until they, the great unspecified they that is society, say screw it, screw you, and lock you away in the warehouse of unloving dementia.'

Have you ever wondered what goes through the minds of those diagnosed with being "manic depressives", "obsessive-compulsives", "schizophrenics" or any other mental disorder that would require them to be placed into an asylum? Actually, I've never given it much thought until I started reading Memoirs From the Asylum. I'm sure that's probably the case with most of us unless we have had to deal first hand with someone in one of these mental incapacities.

The more I read of Memoirs From the Asylum, the more I understood how these people deal with their fears of life. How they are able to withdraw into themselves. Making a safe haven that allows admittance only to those that they invite.

After entering their own personal world, is there ever the possibility of coming back? Maybe partially? And if they do come back into the real world, can the cope with a normal life? Do they really want to? Reading Memoirs From the Asylum gave me the answers to these questions, but then it didn't, making this one thought binding book. Kenneth Weene has so much insight into the minds of these people, leaving me with a feeling of "wish" and "dread".... Wishing I could sometimes slip into my own little world that would allow me to forget all of my problems but Dread because to go there requires you to relinquish control of so many things we are accustomed to. This was one very intense book that I have to admit that I found quite interesting and quite enjoyable.

This incredible novel is more than just a book about the insane. The characters in all their crazed out existences question what it means to be human and what happens when our greatest fears trap us from living. Set during the 1970s/1980s the book is reminiscent of the movies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Girl Interrupted only with a more uplifting, thought provoking edge. Like its movie predecessors this novel pits the inmates against the staff, but therein lays the excellent dichotomy that author, Kenneth Weene has developed. In Memoirs of the Asylum some of the staff members will view the mentally insane as mere furniture objects, yet others will see their own vulnerabilities and frailties mirrored within the patients.

In the view of the narrator, the inmates are controlled by whatever means necessary including, excessive medication, shock treatments and even lobotomies so that the inmates are kept out of sight from society and to do this the staff must be willing and able to lie. Yet, neither inmates nor staff fits very well in this pre-ordained script. The characters in this novel tend to be a messy, vibrant lot, a point made in all its various discussions of excrement. For in our most smelly states in the view of the narrator, we are our much authentic selves. Here in the proverbial restroom there is no escape from our basic and most primitive selves.


This sense of no escape is a central theme in this novel. The more the patients and the staff try to escape from themselves the more they find themselves at each harrowing turn. While the book presents a virtual kaleidoscope of characters losing their minds and ultimately climaxing with a symphonic roar at the full moon as patients are united in their madness which culminates in a murder. This book is anything but gratuitous in its depiction of violence or madness. Each insane person is treated with the utmost care and humanity and in so doing that is the genius behind Weene's writing and the authenticity of this story.

The character we know the most is the narrator who is at once an observer, and a patient suffering from schizophrenia, but more to the heart he is a character making sense of the loss of his best friend and suffering from immense grief. He is not the only mourner in this novel. Marilyn, the catatonic patient is alternately trapped between a variety of layers of grief for her mother, a lost love and lost dog. She is the silent hero. Her catatonic state has a transformative affect on the new medical resident, Dr. Buford Ambrose. He is at once fascinated, mesmerized and disgusted with her state of non-existence, what is essentially a waking death. Yet, this notion of not quite living is symptomatic of many of the inmates and even staff members. But it is Marilyn that has the most transformative effect on the patient, Alan who finds her captivating and representative of the ideal woman, one that is pure and unmoved by the world around her. Yet, her state is anything but un-removed. She is living in the crack in her room in ways she is afraid to do in the living world. It is there that she can face her own fears, her own tormentors over and over. Even though her mini-conquests occur in her mind and in silences they have the un-gluing effect on Dr. Buford Ambrose who questions his very fiber as he feels helpless and unable to cure her and unable to save his crumbling marriage. Yet at the same time he is growing to care for her. And in his near paternal love for her, a family is formed, one with both him and Alan as her dutiful suitor. Alan is the peeping tom, the crazy philosopher and the man who masturbates at will in front of any and everyone including circus elephants. And as Marilyn seeps into a deep stupor under the heavy cloak of meds, she is both the hero to herself as she faces her demons once and for all, yet physically is the victim of a rape. It is at their collective finest hours that Alan, though he is not the father chooses to be her husband and that Marilyn breaks through the walls of her existence and says in her own words to Dr. Arbrose, "The vacation is over. " She welcomes impending motherhood. Though the fate of her life and of Alan's and their child is up to the asylum, the readers are left with the sense that love and acceptance while it may not cure lunacy can dampen its severe decree.
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This book review is written by Julie Ann Weinstein author of the forthcoming short story collection, Flashes from the Other World (All Things That Matter Press, Fall 2010 [...]) To learn more about the authors visit their respective websites, [...]

It struck me that this book should be mandatory in teenage/young adult education; to promote awareness of mental health issues, to empart compassion and empathy amongst the masses for those unlucky few whose lives are blighted by being "different". This is a very endearing, entertaining and compassionate book.

Chances are, you have a family member or an acquaintance who's been affected by a major mental illness. For many people, mental illnesses are very treatable. They will either recover or learn to manage their episodes of illness. For others, a mental illness does not respond to treatment and living in a therapeutic setting becomes an option. Of those whose illness leads to hospitalization, some are lucky enough to be able to afford private care. For others, there's the state hospital.

As Alice famously said to the Cheshire Cat, "I don't want to go among mad people," and any examination of the lives and thoughts of those living in the state hospital will not be a walk in the garden. Although 'Memoirs From the Asylum' by Kenneth Weene is fictional, those of us who have mentally ill friends and relatives or who have worked in mental health care settings will find it unsettlingly real.

Readers will no doubt find this book fascinating. It's like what medieval Christians used to call "the abominable fancy:" the saved glimpsing the suffering of those in Hell. The trouble is, as Weene's book makes clear, the line between the "sane" and the "insane" is a fine one. The "insane" are institutionalized by their own volition, but can declare "the vacation's over" and walk out to rejoin society at any moment. The staff are just as capable of abnormal thoughts and irrational behavior as the patients. It reminds me of a joke from an early season of 'The Simpsons,' when Homer found himself committed and asked the doctors how they could tell who was sane and who was insane. Simple, they tell him: everyone who's insane has his/her hand stamped "INSANE."

'Memoirs From the Asylum' is, at times, funny, sometimes unsettling, but largely tragic. It's a powerful book, but one worth reading. It's a plea for compassion and a disorganized rant as careening as the Jimi Hendrix solos that a patient named Jamul endlessly plays on his invisible guitar.

Funny thing about that: thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the Navy record of the real Jimi Hendrix is now public, and it reveals he was once thought to have a mental illness. The real Hendrix seemed to be unable to concentrate on any work other than writing songs and playing his guitar! Perhaps Jamul was a misunderstood genius. Within the pages of 'Memoirs of the Asylum,' anything is possible.

Ken Weene has created a masterpiece of devastating beauty. Memoirs from the Asylum is a story from the fetid underbelly of civilization that is too ugly to consider let alone experience first hand. Ken masterfully gives life to these characters through the all-too-real tragedies of their existence. Ken captures the ethos of humanity, and insanity, as we are guided by the disturbingly rational eloquence of the narrator. We see the well-to-do intentions of an overambitious doctor rust as the Asylum consumes him. We are taken on a hopeless journey that only very few return from.

It is a tale that can only be written by a person who not only has experience in an asylum, but who has a profound understanding of the soul and what it means to be human. Memoirs from the Asylum will evoke the reader to feel, to think, to laugh and to cry.

"If jazz is the music of life, how can we describe the music of the asylum? Discordant, raucous, lacking in form, it is the music of a creeping groaning machine. The sound does not uplift, nor does it invite introspection. Its emotions are anxiety and loss. It is not sad because it does not care." (p.127)

I give this my highest rating. A must read!