Customer Reviews

The Quickening Maze

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey and "The Quickening Maze" by Adam Foulds are the two most captivating novels I ever read about mental patients and the persons who look after them.

Foulds uses a poetical language and by poetry he tries to understand the intricate and illogical thoughts of some of the patients. He often describes nature also and uses that as a counterpart for the asylum. The infinite forest encloses the village and the asylum so that the asylum becomes a world on its own. An attempt to free one self as an individual is made impossible by the impenetrability of the forest. This symbolizes the inability of some patients ( one of the most important is the nature poet John Clare ) to understand their personal destiny. It's not that they don't see a goal in life, they just don't know how to reach it.

In the first half of the novel you get bits and pieces of several stories, each of them standing on its own with no connection with the other parts of the novel. It's almost as the language of a schizophrenic who takes pieces of several thoughts and brings them together to form a mangled and incomprehensible language. But as the novel continues everything begins to fall into place to form a story-line and a question: where is the borderline between the sane and the insane?

Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, 'The Quickening Maze' centers on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare. After years struggling with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, Clare finds himself in High Beach Private Asylum - an institution run on reformist principles which would later become known as occupational therapy. At the same time another poet, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life and catastrophic schemes of the asylum's owner, the peculiar, charismatic Dr. Matthew Allen.

THE QUICKENING MAZE is not a lengthy book in words but is by no means a quick or easy read. Prior to receiving this book I had only the barest idea who 19th century British poets John Clare and Alfred, Lord Tennyson were. I am glad I did a little research around the basic facts of their lives before starting this novel since I'm afraid I might have found much of the text incomprehensible if I hadn't reviewed their life stories.

The book is set at a mental institution in Epping Forest near London. The asylum, High Beach, actually existed as did its director and founder Matthew Allen. Poet John Clare lived there under Allen's care for several years while he suffered from various delusions and manias. Alfred, Lord Tennyson lived nearby and though he was never an inmate of High Beach his brother Septimus who suffered from "melancholy" was. Apparently Tennyson was well acquainted with Dr. Allen as the doctor convinced Tennyson and other members of his family to invest in a money making enterprise that failed causing financial hardships for Tennyson in the years before he became famous as a poet. Various other inmates, asylum employees, gypsies and family members of the major characters make up the rest of the rather crowded cast of THE QUICKENING MAZE.

Author Foulds has talent at a writer and in a less skilled author's hands this difficult book would have been unreadable. At times the book's writing seems quite pretentious and at other points the reader is jarred by some very earthy descriptions of bodily functions. Those with an interest in Victorian British poets with "quirks" will likely admire THE QUICKENING MAZE but the book is not accessible or engaging enough for the casual reader to readily enjoy.

". . . are of imagination all compact," continues Shakespeare, and Adam Foulds might well have taken this for the motto of this novel. The setting is High Beach, a mental asylum run by Dr. Matthew Allen, on the fringes of Epping Forest, East of London. The time is the late eighteen-thirties. The poets are John Clare, a laborer's son briefly celebrated for his rural verse, and Alfred Tennyson, near the beginning of his own career. All three were real figures. Clare was to be institutionalized for the rest of his life, and largely forgotten only to be rediscovered a century later. Tennyson, himself a melancholic, bought a property nearby to be close to his brother Septimus, who committed himself to the asylum. And Allen was an extraordinary figure: "chemical philosopher, phrenologist, pedagogue, and mad-doctor," in the words of his biographer; add to that inventor, entrepreneur, and bankrupt. Adam Foulds has woven these factual strands into a tapestry of the imagination, set equally in the minds of its many characters and the revolving seasons of the English countryside.

The human world of High Beach is an often confusing jumble of inmates, attendants, visitors, members of Allen's family including his lovesick daughter Hannah, together with other assorted children, neighbors, and visitors. It is difficult to keep straight, and made more difficult still when an inmate suddenly starts calling himself by a different name. But although Allen has some sadistic attendants under his unwitting command, he is an enlightened doctor who allows his patients much liberty -- so the world of nature interpenetrates everything. Foulds is at his best when closest to the countryside, as when John Clare wanders far from home as a boy in the prologue, or his several unauthorized excursions from High Beach to visit a nearby gypsy encampment. Or when one of the inmates, Margaret, has a religious vision in the woods: "The wind separated into thumps, into wing beats. An angel. An angel there in front of her. Tears fell like petals from her face. It stopped in front of her. Settling, its wings made a chittering sound. [...] It reached out with its beautiful hands to steady itself in the mortal world, touching leaves, touching branches, and left stains of brightness where it touched."

Like Maggie O'Farrell did in THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX and Faulkner knew before her, Foulds has discovered that the voices of madness permit a less literal approach to storytelling, in which desire and memory can play on an equal footing with fact. At its best, it is a highly evocative approach. But I am not convinced that he uses it to evoke anything very important -- not, for instance, as Pat Barker had done in REGENERATION when she placed the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in a mental hospital against the background of the Flanders trenches. Nor is there anything quite so compelling as Clare's own lines written from captivity: "And yet I am! and live with shadows, tost | Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, | Into the living sea of waking dreams, | Where there is neither sense of life nor joys, | But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems." Foulds can paint the seascape of those waking dreams, but he cannot experience the shipwreck.

But how does one really take a sane reader into the world of madness? Part of Foulds' strategy is to erase the boundaries berween sane and insane. Shakespeare would suggest that there is not much difference between the lunatic and the poet, and with the very soft borders separating the various categories in Dr. Allen's establishment (not to mention the crazy enthusiasms of Allen himself), the two do seem to merge. But an empathetic portrayal of individual torment is really only possible when balancing on the brink, but still retaining some contact with sanity. Foulds' description of John Clare losing himself in the countryside as a boy already has the seeds of all that will become of him, both good and ill. Margaret's vision of the angel is about as far as Foulds could go and still have the reader see through her eyes. But when Clare (as he did) declares himself to be Byron or Shakespeare, the reader can only shake his head and pull back. If this novel lacks focus, as I fear it does, it may simply be because its target is beyond the reach of any lens.

I knew John Clare's name, but nothing at all about him before reading this novel. Tennyson I of course knew, since my M.A. is in English literature. But I had no idea the great poet's brother had been in an insane asylum, nor his relation to poet John Clare.

Of course, this is a novel, so liberties are taken. I can't assume what's historic fact and what's embellishment, but the book blends so seamlessly I had no idea what was true and what fictionalized.

It's just such lovely prose, so beautifully written. I normally pick apart every book I read; that's just the editor in me. But with this novel I'd have to really stretch to say anything about it is sub-par. If I'm really picky I could say the "romance" between Hannah and Tennyson was a bit awkward. Not just the literal age difference and what not, but something about it just didn't quite ring true to me. Hard to put my finger on exactly what, but there you have it.

I was pre-disposed to liking this novel. There's the English degree, and the fact I love, ADORE books written from the perspective of the mad. And we won't go into analysis on that, now, will we...

A good read, though. I'd recommend it.

Somewhere toward the end of this inventive and imaginative novel, peasant nature poet John Clare muses about "the maze of a life with no way out, paths taken, places been."

In reality -- and much of this book IS based on reality -- each of the characters within these pages will enter into a maze -- figuratively, through the twists and turns of diseased minds, and literally, through the winding paths of the nearby forest. Some will escape unscathed and others will never emerge. But all will be altered.

At the start of the novel, John Clare has been incarcerated in a progressive (for the times) institution called the High Beach Private Asylum. It doesn't take long for the reader to come to the understanding that this seemingly sane poet is not unjustly imprisoned, but is in fact, stark raving mad. Shortly thereafter, John Clare is joined by Septimus Tennyson, the mad brother of the famous Alfred Lord Tennyson, who also takes up residence.

The owner of the asylum -- Matthew Allen -- displays fairness to the inhabitants, yet he has demons of his own. He has escaped a dodgy past as a debtor and has lost the respect of his parsimonious older brother. One of his older daughters, Hannah, is just coming of age and has developed an unrequited crush on Tennyson. Other characters, such as the brutal right-hand man Stockdale and the delusional and fervent Margaret-turned-Mary, drift in and out of the narrative.

Quickening Maze slips slightly when it delves into a subplot about a doomed mass-produce decorative woodcarvings invention, in my opinion. It helps to know that in reality, this happened, and Tennyson lost most of his inherited fortune as a result. After reading Quickening Maze, it is nearly impossible to not go running to check out what parts of this book are based on truths. Yet it does not slip enough for me to deprive the novel of its fifth rating star.

Without spoilers and with a nod to the poet Robert Frost (who is NOT mentioned in this book), John Clare will try on various personage from the past, including Lord Byron and Shakespeare himself; his mind will travel "to where it bent in the undergrowth." Hannah will need to lose her path to find the one that has "perhaps the better claim". Matthew Allen will slip on his path and go back down one that he has already precariously traveled before, forgetting "how way leads on to way". And the famous Tennyson? He, too, will forge forward on the path that bcomes his destiny and he will be remembered "aged and ages hence". As Hannah states, "To love the life that was possible: that also was a freedom, perhaps the only freedom."

I was startled by the beautiful pace and elegant rhythm of the novel. It moved me deeply, from understanding different (and differently motivated) characters to sensing the seasons and moods of the English countryside. Although it is definitely an historical novel, it doesn't feel like one. On the contrary, it has an immediacy of impact. I highly recommend The Quickening Maze for anyone looking for (1) a good read or (2) a novel in which characterization and setting are made real.

On a separate note, the portrayal of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was astonishing. I loved it.

Adrian Foulds is a young British poet, and is worthy of being followed. His novel tells the story of the heartbreaking poet, John Clare, in his descent into madness. At the institution in Epping Forest, where Clare wrote some of his most brilliant and moving poems, the inmate develops a relationship with a young Tennyson, as well as the chief doctor. Nature, genius, passion, and the romance of science are themes not only of the poems themselves, but also of the lives of the protagonists. A novel of great depth of feeling and thought, and a superb read."I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare

I picked up this book after reading a review for it in The New Yorker. The story unfolds through the eyes of a multitude of interesting characters and never has a dull moment. Despite the quick movement of narrative points of view the book remains fluid and the author's poetic inclination makes for succulent prose. Very worthwhile.

Adam Foulds goes to the top of the list of young British novelists with this incredible story of a mental institution in 1837. Dr. Matthew Allen runs the place, poet John Clare is an inmate, and fellow poet Alfred Tennyson is in residence as well as a long-term visitor of his inmate-brother. All are real historical figures, of course, but the author takes the material and shapes it for his own purposes. He gets so deeply inside the heads of his characters that one suspects Foulds can do pretty much anything he likes as a writer, like Ian McEwan, like David MItchell. I'll be looking for all his future books henceforth.

This novel is typical of those finely crafted 'literary' novels written in exquisitely crafted sentences that make reading a slow process - carefully placed metaphors and similies placed like speed bumps on Hackney or Islington streets, designed to stop you rattling through the pages as you would with, perhaps, a Steig Larsson.

Foulds is certainly one of those sensitive poet novelists, with a silky pen. But the style does work to create an almost misty and gothic world of the High Beach asylum in Epping Forest where the poet John Clare and others were incarcerated in the 19th Century. Using nature not so much as an artifice but as a tapestry on which to imagine the characters of that world, Foulds paints a delicate and moving picture of pompous poets (Tennyson), delicate mad poets (Clar), naive and romantic teenage girls (Hannah), and superbly smug and self aggrandising high Victorian reformers (Dr Matthew Allen, owner of the asylum).

It is a dark and claustrophobic world, but one brought skilfully to life by Foulds' story. Especially if you find all those delicate and equisitely placed metaphors to your taste.