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Asylum (Paperback)

by Patrick McGrath (Author) "The catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession has been a professional interest of mine for many years now ..." (more)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (5 Jul 2001)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0140258221
ISBN-13: 978-0140258226
Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 1.6 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 62,848 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#2 in Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > M > McGrath, Patrick

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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 (Learn More)

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

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	89% buy the item featured on this page: Asylum 4.5 out of 5 stars (21) �6.43
	5% buy Trauma 3.9 out of 5 stars (8) �5.49
	2% buy Spider: A Novel 4.3 out of 5 stars (7)
	2% buy A High Wind in Jamaica (Vintage classics) 4.8 out of 5 stars (6) �4.99

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Customer Reviews

21 Reviews

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Love Story as it should be, 20 Jul 2003

By A Customer

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...

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, 28 Mar 2007

By	kehs (Hertfordshire, England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This is a gothic love story, set in a mental asylum, that at first look I thought was going to be too depressing to read. How wrong I was. McGrath really drew me in with his dark, but captivating writing style. From the beginning it's clear that this story is going to end tragically, but the writing is pacey enough to keep the reader hooked.

The book is about Stella who lives with her psychiatrist husband Max and a young son called Charlie, in the grounds of a high-security mental hospital. She is very unhappy with her life and embarks on a romance with Edgar; one of the inmates who she later discovers murdered his wife and mutilated her body whilst in a jealous rage. Nevertheless, she becomes obsessed by Edgar, and starts on a course of actions that ultimately lead to a harrowing tragedy.

This novel shows the darker side of love and the extremes of behaviour that can arise from it. A captivating read that was a true page-turner for me.

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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and compelling, 2 Feb 2001

By A Customer

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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars 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 3 months ago by J. A. P. Sherwood-taylor

5.0 out of 5 stars 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... Read more

Published 7 months ago by G. Kinman

4.0 out of 5 stars Obsession meets self-interest
Asylum by Patrick McGrath

Asylum by Patrick McGrath is an intense study of self-obsession and self-interest. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Philip Spires

4.0 out of 5 stars A novel about control
MacGrath reveals the vulnerability of those who are subject to compulsive behaviour and the hubris of the psychiatrists that claim to be able to control, if not understand them... Read more

Published 17 months ago by Alice Cadis

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh me, oh my!
Max Raphael is the new Deputy Superintendent at a provincial asylum outside London. Stella, his beautiful, gregarious, intelligent wife is suffocating in her marriage. Read more

Published 21 months ago by Other Stories

5.0 out of 5 stars One in a million...
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. Read more

Published on 24 Oct 2005 by primitivegrrl

2.0 out of 5 stars Question the hype
Just about scrapes three stars. A modern book that reads as if it was written in the 1950s in which it was set. Read more

Published on 27 Aug 2005 by Mark Easton

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb, somber and realistic novel
Max Raphael becomes the deputy superintendent of a provincial hospital for the criminally insane in 1959. Read more

Published on 16 Aug 2005 by Philippe Horak

5.0 out of 5 stars interesting and somewhat disturbing
The idea of this book interested me greatly and I read with great enthusiasm. I enjoyed it immensely and I finished it in a very short time since the writing was so beautiful and... Read more

Published on 18 Aug 2004 by llia1981

5.0 out of 5 stars A sense of danger
permeates the whole story. This is a book about insanity which centres around the superintendent's wife Stella, who leaves him for a patient who is in the psychiatric hopsital... Read more

Published on 2 Aug 2004 by sam155

› See all 21 customer reviews...

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