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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
As a psychiatrist in a top-security mental hospital in the 1950s, Peter Cleave has made a study of what he calls 'the catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession.' His experience is extensive, and he is never surprised. Until, that is, he comes reluctantly to accept that the wife of one of his colleagues has embarked on such an affair...
About the Author
Patrick McGrath is the author of THE GROTESQUE, SPIDER, DR HAGGARD'S DISEASE and BLOOD AND WATER AND OTHER TALES all of which have attracted widespread critical acclaim. He lives in New York.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession has been a professional interest of mine for many years now. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession has been a professional interest of mine for many years now. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of the most engaging and gripping reads I have ever come across. McGrath has an incredible skill of drawing the reader into a false sense of security before cruelly creating the some of the darkest and most depressing scenes in modern literature. Stella is a woman trapped in a loveless marriage with a longing for passion. She finds it in Edgar, an articulate and seemingly sane prisoner of an Asylum. The book is woven in an unsentimental and stark, often harsh format by a psychiatrist. This clever viewpoint allows the book to maintain a raw and very real feel throughout. The disturbing nature of the book and its haunting characters played on my mind for many months afterwards. I would recommend it to anyone who simply has a love of words and love stories in their original, tragic structures...
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Haunting, compellingly written, Asylum tells the story of Stella Raphael, the beautiful, impressionable young wife of Max, a forensic psychiatrist at a well-respected psychiatric institution outside of London. Unlike some fictional "unhappy wives", Stella is not a foolish heroine; in fact she is intelligent, perceptive, and quite well-versed in her husband's metier, a fact which will serve her well later in the story.
Compelled by a powerful mix of physical attraction, unfulfilled ambitions, and fascination with the world outside her marriage, she embarks on a dangerous affair with a mental patient, Edgar Stark. It is a tribute to McGrath's art that you never question for one moment how it happens or why, to our horror, she continues it, despite the dreadful consequences. In fact, you find yourself almost understanding her compulsion, wondering whether you would be able to do any better than she does in the end.
But the real villian in the story may not be the frightening Edgar, nor Stella, but the narrator himself. Ostensibly a dispassionate observer - a fellow psychiatrist in the Raphaels' circle - you find yourself wondering, as the story unfolds, what is the real truth about what happened to Stella? Who is deceiving whom? And finally, who and what has finally been manipulated?
Asylum has been described as a Gothic novel. I disagree. Gothic novels are filled with spooky references to ancient horrors that may or may not be real. Asylum, on the other hand, is all too real. The fact that there are no sleights-of-hand in it; the reluctant understanding that Stella's situation, although it may be extreme, is all too possible, is what makes this novel the beautiful and disturbing piece of literature that it is.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
once or twice in a year you come across a book that you really can't put down. It is a cliche but sometimes it can prove more than true. Asylum is one of these books - I read it between everything I did during a day and just found it impossible to put down. McGrath is a superb writer and this story of Stella and her descent into (or escape from) an unreal life is charted beautifully. The inevitable tragedies, though seen from the beginning, are still an emotional shock. I loved the fact that the narrator is another of the doctors at the asylum, which is not made immediately clear who, but you know Stella's fate from the get go. You feel as if you are standing alongside the narrator, Peter, and both of you slowly watch this beautiful woman be crippled by desire. This really is a fantastic read and though the first of McGrath's novels I have read, I assure you it won't be the last. This novel will stay with me for a long time - easily one of the best 10 novels I have ever read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Asylum book
Read an article by Emila Fox to say this was her favourite book. A very good read . Well written would highly recommend this
Published 1 month ago by james
Unusual and addictive
I finished this in two days and was gripped from the start. In the beginning you have a lot of sympathy for Stella, but gradually you want to shake her for her pure selfishness as... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lucy
If you enjoyed The Little Stranger read this.
I can not recall now when I first read this book, but I know I shall read it again and again. As the men around her consume Stella so the book consumes your thoughts. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Books keep me sane
Passion and Obsession at its very best!
I completely embodied Stella throughout this novel, empathically understanding and following her psychological demise. Read more
Published 7 months ago by L. Flitton
Asylum is Awesome
Patrick McGrath has surpassed himself with this book. It is my all time No1 favourite book. I have read and read and read it over and over again. It is absolutely brilliant. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Sally Stafford
Asylum by Patrick McGrath
A fantastic read. I have read this book twice. A very moving story of how a womans mental health affects the people closest to her.
Published 18 months ago by Carrie
Page turner and engaging thriller
I finished asylum by patrick McGrath in 3 days. Overall, the book is very good and an easy page turner. Read more
Published on 28 May 2010 by Modupe Oriyomi
`One struggles with shame every day.'
In the summer of 1959, Dr Max Raphael is appointed deputy superintendent of a remote English hospital for the criminally insane. Read more
Published on 6 May 2010 by J. Cameron-Smith
Puzzling
I bought this book because I knew McGrath when he was about 10 years old. I was a couple of years older and we attended the same school for a while in the late 50s, the time when... Read more
Published on 31 July 2009 by J. A. P. Sherwood-taylor
Truly wonderful
This is a truly wonderful and memorable book. It is challenging, yet highly engaging. As a psychologist, I found his insight into the human psyche and the fallability of those who... Read more
Published on 28 Mar 2009 by G. Kinman
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