AsylumPatrick McGrath
It's interesting how an author can create a character so repulsive, and yet, still somehow kinda hot. That's all I could think about when reading Asylum, which centers on one woman's obsession with an inmate in her husband's mental hospital.
Stella Raphael is clearly a friggin moron. Despite being married to the asylum's deputy superintendent, she becomes obsessed with a patient named Edgar Stark, who, as an artist on work detail, has been given the job of restoring a old building on Raphael's property. To be fair, though, I could feel Stark's hotness emanating through the pages. I guess you can't blame a girl for throwing away a perfectly stable life for a lunatic artist who beheaded and enuculated his wife in a jealous rage. Right? right.
(Vocab alert! Enuculate means to remove the eyes. Even the word sounds all squishy. Eyeballs = teh grossness.) And yet...there's still something about Edgar.
Asylum is narrated by Dr. Cleave, another of the asylum's doctors. Dr. Cleave might be one of the most fascinating narrators I've encountered in awhile. His observations are astute, sly, and subtle. I just learned that Sir Ian McKellan played him in the recent movie adaptation of the novel, and I couldn't have thought of a better fit.
Cleave's point of view allows readers to simultaneously enjoy both an objective and a highly biased perspective, and Cleave's voice is one that subtly develops over the course of the novel. His narration is one of the novel's strengths, even in areas that lagged. I found Asylum so intriguing that I carted it everywhere I went, reading it even at the expense of appearing rude (like during a meeting between my husband, myself, and the bank. Oh well.)
In a nutshell: It's clear from the beginning that Asylum won't end well, but McGrath manages to retain both suspense and surprise in this fast-paced and thrilling novel.
Bibliolatry Scale: 4.5 out of 6 stars
Stella Raphael is clearly a friggin moron. Despite being married to the asylum's deputy superintendent, she becomes obsessed with a patient named Edgar Stark, who, as an artist on work detail, has been given the job of restoring a old building on Raphael's property. To be fair, though, I could feel Stark's hotness emanating through the pages. I guess you can't blame a girl for throwing away a perfectly stable life for a lunatic artist who beheaded and enuculated his wife in a jealous rage. Right? right.
(Vocab alert! Enuculate means to remove the eyes. Even the word sounds all squishy. Eyeballs = teh grossness.) And yet...there's still something about Edgar.
Asylum is narrated by Dr. Cleave, another of the asylum's doctors. Dr. Cleave might be one of the most fascinating narrators I've encountered in awhile. His observations are astute, sly, and subtle. I just learned that Sir Ian McKellan played him in the recent movie adaptation of the novel, and I couldn't have thought of a better fit.Cleave's point of view allows readers to simultaneously enjoy both an objective and a highly biased perspective, and Cleave's voice is one that subtly develops over the course of the novel. His narration is one of the novel's strengths, even in areas that lagged. I found Asylum so intriguing that I carted it everywhere I went, reading it even at the expense of appearing rude (like during a meeting between my husband, myself, and the bank. Oh well.)
In a nutshell: It's clear from the beginning that Asylum won't end well, but McGrath manages to retain both suspense and surprise in this fast-paced and thrilling novel.
Bibliolatry Scale: 4.5 out of 6 stars
3 comments:
Thanks for the review. This has been on my shelf for a while, and I couldn't decided whether or not I wanted to read it.
Turns out I do...
If you google 'enulcated' (because you didn't read far enough before going What?! WHAT!? A word I don't know!?!??!), this blog post comes up 6th on the first page. You're famous.
OMG! I've got to read this!
Reading your review, I was reminded a little of Mrs. Soffel, a 1984 movie in which Diane Keaton, who is the prison warden's wife, gets involved with a very young and VERY HOT Mel Gibson, breaking him out of prison right before his appointment at the gallows and running away with him.
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