The Quickening Maze
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Review
" The language is simple, sometimes adorned with fleeting and apt images: the sky is `cloud-breeding', summer clouds are `curds' --Literary Review
`a vividly sympathetic exploration of poetry, madness and identity.'
--The Week
`It's a work of strikingly beautiful, unforced writing'
--Daily Express
Foulds was becoming the pin-up boy of contemporary poets...this beautifully described novel suggests he's equally a master of prose'. --Radio Times
'rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between' --Guardian
'a profoundly imagined historical novel, with a gripping plot and some memorably beautiful scenes' --Times Literary Supplement
`a vividly sympathetic exploration of poetry, madness and identity.'
--The Week
`It's a work of strikingly beautiful, unforced writing'
--Daily Express
Foulds was becoming the pin-up boy of contemporary poets...this beautifully described novel suggests he's equally a master of prose'. --Radio Times
'rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between' --Guardian
'a profoundly imagined historical novel, with a gripping plot and some memorably beautiful scenes' --Times Literary Supplement
Review
'The world he evokes...is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read this book because it was selected for my book club read. Out of the 6 of us in the club, 4 enjoyed it, one gave up after page 5 and the 6th didn't see much merit in it. I think it justifies its place on the Booker shortlist. The plot is original and intriguing, and the writing rather beautifully poetic, the sparse but gorgeous language helping to bring alive the natural setting and unfolding story. The plot has been described in great detail by other reviewers, but it is worth stressing that it is about more than just the 2 poets - John Clare and Alfred Tennyson. The story revolves around the world of the eccentric and inventive Matthew Allen, whose antics as head of a lunatic asylum create a page-turning and sometimes dark plot. His daughter Hannah is a daring young woman striving to break free of the constraints of Victorian society, where so many new possibilities are hinted at but, ultimately, seem out of reach. The pictures that Foulds draws of this varied cast of characters are vivid, engaging and shocking, and his depiction of Tennyson is hilarious.
Definitely warrants another read.
Definitely warrants another read.
71 of 77 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
From 1837 to 1841, John Clare, the peasant poet, was a patient in a private asylum in the Epping Forest. Clare and his wife Patty had six children and life was proving increasingly burdensome to Clare, who began to suffer bouts of severe depression, leading to alarmingly erratic behaviour and serious delusions. In The Quickening Maze, Adam Foulds has written an imaginative recreation of Clare's years in the High Beech Asylum, and while the result is firmly fictional, the picture presented is realistic and consistent with the known history.
The book is sparsely written. Foulds does not write lengthy descriptive or scene-setting passages, but each small vignette contributes to a rich picture of the cloistered life of a 19th century private asylum. This is no mad-house. The asylum is run on orderly lines by Dr Matthew Allen, a thoughtful man who likes to get to know his patients. However, the finances of the asylum are precarious and Foulds describes Allen's attempts to mix the cure of souls with mechanical invention and patents. Poor Allen finds his time increasingly spent trying to "diversify his business", but without success.
In the meantime, the patients are allowed a relative freedom, and for a while John Clare is allowed a day-pass from his confinement, a privilege he abuses by staying overnight with gypsies and returning much the worse for wear. I found the section where Clare is with his gypsy friends particularly well-written, showing the considerable research Foulds has put into this book. The detailed description of how to prepare a hedgehog for the pot is particularly enlightening.
Alas, despite his occasional forays beyond the asylum, John Clare's mind is far from peace. When not inhabiting his real persona as the gentle poet of hedgerow and field, he becomes a belligerent prize-fighter, Jack Randall, who picks fights wherever he goes (and the injuries to go with them - perhaps not surprising in view of Clare's five-foot stature and his poor physical health). At other times he becomes Lord Byron and in his more lucid moments actually re-writes some of Byron's poems.
Adam Foulds has cleverly inter-leaved the appearance of another poet into his narrative: Alfred Tennyson, who accompanies his mentally-ill brother during his stay at High Beech. Tennyson lives in a nearby cottage and becomes the focus of attention of the Matthew Allen's 17 year-old daughter Hannah who manages to inveigle Tennyson into conversations as at attempt at forcing his interest in her as a potential fiancée. The two poets, Clare and Tennyson, do not really meet up in the novel other than "in passing", and of course, Tennyson would not have been particularly impressed by Clare's rustic verse, for it took many years after his death before Clare's heritage was fully appreciated.
This is a fine book. Adam Foulds captures atmosphere well and we also get a fine sense of the depths of 19th century Epping Forest - a place holding many secrets and where it was easy to become lost. Readers will gain a strong sense of the secluded little community on the edge of the forest. Foulds has researched the 19th century treatment of mental illness and we gain insight into how one of the more humane asylums operated. Rather than the horrors of the Victorian Bedlam, we get glimpses of a far more compassionate and humane institution built around a domestic world created by a real family and their friends.
The book is sparsely written. Foulds does not write lengthy descriptive or scene-setting passages, but each small vignette contributes to a rich picture of the cloistered life of a 19th century private asylum. This is no mad-house. The asylum is run on orderly lines by Dr Matthew Allen, a thoughtful man who likes to get to know his patients. However, the finances of the asylum are precarious and Foulds describes Allen's attempts to mix the cure of souls with mechanical invention and patents. Poor Allen finds his time increasingly spent trying to "diversify his business", but without success.
In the meantime, the patients are allowed a relative freedom, and for a while John Clare is allowed a day-pass from his confinement, a privilege he abuses by staying overnight with gypsies and returning much the worse for wear. I found the section where Clare is with his gypsy friends particularly well-written, showing the considerable research Foulds has put into this book. The detailed description of how to prepare a hedgehog for the pot is particularly enlightening.
Alas, despite his occasional forays beyond the asylum, John Clare's mind is far from peace. When not inhabiting his real persona as the gentle poet of hedgerow and field, he becomes a belligerent prize-fighter, Jack Randall, who picks fights wherever he goes (and the injuries to go with them - perhaps not surprising in view of Clare's five-foot stature and his poor physical health). At other times he becomes Lord Byron and in his more lucid moments actually re-writes some of Byron's poems.
Adam Foulds has cleverly inter-leaved the appearance of another poet into his narrative: Alfred Tennyson, who accompanies his mentally-ill brother during his stay at High Beech. Tennyson lives in a nearby cottage and becomes the focus of attention of the Matthew Allen's 17 year-old daughter Hannah who manages to inveigle Tennyson into conversations as at attempt at forcing his interest in her as a potential fiancée. The two poets, Clare and Tennyson, do not really meet up in the novel other than "in passing", and of course, Tennyson would not have been particularly impressed by Clare's rustic verse, for it took many years after his death before Clare's heritage was fully appreciated.
This is a fine book. Adam Foulds captures atmosphere well and we also get a fine sense of the depths of 19th century Epping Forest - a place holding many secrets and where it was easy to become lost. Readers will gain a strong sense of the secluded little community on the edge of the forest. Foulds has researched the 19th century treatment of mental illness and we gain insight into how one of the more humane asylums operated. Rather than the horrors of the Victorian Bedlam, we get glimpses of a far more compassionate and humane institution built around a domestic world created by a real family and their friends.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This slender novel is a thought-provoking, relatively quick, and relatively enjoyable read. Regarding the central character, the real-life poet John Clare, I come from a position of ignorance and it is quite possible that had I known more of him I would have found more to enjoy, or at least more to recognise. But the book is explicitly not intended as history and I think as a portrait of insanity it is effective without any prior knowledge.
The prose is at times quite luminous, and in describing the natural world Foulds has a genuine talent. Certainly he has made great effort to be poetical in his descriptions, and evidently this to widespread acclaim. However I am hesitant to add the possible heresy that at times he seems to have tried rather too hard to find the "right" adjective (often, that is, a strikingly incongruous one). I don't say this in exasperation, since in fact Foulds' vocabulary is not especially showy (though there is a whiff of ostentation), but its usage can greatly affect the flow of the narrative -- it takes a fine judgment to know when to employ some arresting terminology and when to let the sweep of the story carry the reader along. Foulds achieves beauty in the minutiae and in the countless vignettes (the scene in which a deer is eviscerated and cooked is majestic), but this does not to my mind translate into a beautiful novel. In this regard I was reminded of a previous Booker winner, John Banville's "The Sea", which I felt sure to enjoy after the opening pages, but whose pretensions ultimately dwarfed its achievements. That is an unfair judgment in this case (and maybe in the other!) -- there is little of Banville's desperately overwrought prose here, and Maze is probably a superior work to Sea -- but veterans of Banville may have an inkling of what to expect.
My other more serious gripe is with the highly fractured plotting and its consequences. The book's several "chapters" of consecutive seasons are each broken into numerous bite-size chunks whose length can be as short as a few lines, and which are rarely longer than three or four pages. Although this is a great benefit for anyone forced to read in brief interrupted sessions (e.g. on the tube), this skipping around is problematic for delineating and developing characters, and since the whole piece is barely 200 pages, it results in a sizeable cast of largely functional caricatures. There is a stock villain who rapes the patients, a lunatic who worries about God and the National Debt and nothing else, the "Jane Austen" daughter who fantasises about love and marriage to the exclusion of all other interests, and so on. Even the real-life characters are a little thin -- Dr Allen at the asylum, for example, is a central figure but has been rendered narcissistic to the point of farce, and without the shred of a redeeming feature he is not just unpleasant (none of the characters are especially likeable), but also rather implausible. Only Clare, who enjoys the bulk of the most virtuosic prose, comes alive as an individual, and the portrait of his descent into madness is poignant, compelling and thoroughly credible.
The prose is at times quite luminous, and in describing the natural world Foulds has a genuine talent. Certainly he has made great effort to be poetical in his descriptions, and evidently this to widespread acclaim. However I am hesitant to add the possible heresy that at times he seems to have tried rather too hard to find the "right" adjective (often, that is, a strikingly incongruous one). I don't say this in exasperation, since in fact Foulds' vocabulary is not especially showy (though there is a whiff of ostentation), but its usage can greatly affect the flow of the narrative -- it takes a fine judgment to know when to employ some arresting terminology and when to let the sweep of the story carry the reader along. Foulds achieves beauty in the minutiae and in the countless vignettes (the scene in which a deer is eviscerated and cooked is majestic), but this does not to my mind translate into a beautiful novel. In this regard I was reminded of a previous Booker winner, John Banville's "The Sea", which I felt sure to enjoy after the opening pages, but whose pretensions ultimately dwarfed its achievements. That is an unfair judgment in this case (and maybe in the other!) -- there is little of Banville's desperately overwrought prose here, and Maze is probably a superior work to Sea -- but veterans of Banville may have an inkling of what to expect.
My other more serious gripe is with the highly fractured plotting and its consequences. The book's several "chapters" of consecutive seasons are each broken into numerous bite-size chunks whose length can be as short as a few lines, and which are rarely longer than three or four pages. Although this is a great benefit for anyone forced to read in brief interrupted sessions (e.g. on the tube), this skipping around is problematic for delineating and developing characters, and since the whole piece is barely 200 pages, it results in a sizeable cast of largely functional caricatures. There is a stock villain who rapes the patients, a lunatic who worries about God and the National Debt and nothing else, the "Jane Austen" daughter who fantasises about love and marriage to the exclusion of all other interests, and so on. Even the real-life characters are a little thin -- Dr Allen at the asylum, for example, is a central figure but has been rendered narcissistic to the point of farce, and without the shred of a redeeming feature he is not just unpleasant (none of the characters are especially likeable), but also rather implausible. Only Clare, who enjoys the bulk of the most virtuosic prose, comes alive as an individual, and the portrait of his descent into madness is poignant, compelling and thoroughly credible.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Early psychiatry
I am interested in the early practices in psychiatry and this was a good place to start; the fact that it was also about the poet John Clare made it doubly interesting. Read more
Published 2 months ago by C. M. Evershed
Not for everyone but a beautifully atmospheric book
Adam Foulds novel `The Quickening Maze' is a novel loosely based on factual events which took place at High Beach Private Asylum in Epping Forest where the poet John Clare was... Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. Willis
Silly Name - Great Book
Adam Foulds's new novel revolves around an asylum in Epping Forest in 1840. Alfred Tennyson is living there visiting his melancholic brother, Septimius, who is an inmate there. Read more
Published 9 months ago by D. J. Andrews
our dreams amount to nothing - love the life that is possible
I found myself reading this very quickly, and wishing I could slow down and really enjoy the prose. It follows several narratives across seven seasons (and the seasons and nature... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Lucinda Stern
So dull I didn't finish it
Sorry to say I didn't bother finishing this book because I found it so tedious. I really didn't care about any of the characters and found the writing style over-wordy and lacking... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Raouul
Beautiful and flowing prose
I am glad I was given this novel this Christmas. It is a real joy that I would otherwise have missed. Read more
Published 16 months ago by R. Newton
AN EYE OPENING AND POIGNANT READ
Having been to Epping Forest, and more especially to High Beach many times on geography field trips,I had no idea that this area once contained a mental asylum, for me this made... Read more
Published 16 months ago by bibliophile
Brilliant New Talent
Great to find an original new talent. I adored this book. It is poetic without being turgid (see my review of Anne Michaels Something or other Vault). Well done Adam Foulds. Read more
Published 18 months ago by millicentlyd
The Quickening Maze
I liked the concept of the story i.e. people in a mental hospital. Foulds has tried to capture the life of people inside and ouside the asylum but there were so many characters and... Read more
Published 20 months ago by S. Gupta
Different but not novel
I found this a contrary book, I don't think it really works as a novel but then, if not, what is it. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mick Read
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