The Quickening Maze
By Adam Foulds
(Penguin (Non-Classics), Paperback, 9780143117797, June 2010, 272pp.)

The Short of It:

Here, madness and brilliance collide in an ethereal, tenuous manner but ultimately, the book falls short of its mark.

The Rest Of It:

This story is based on real events and is about John Clare, famed nature poet, and his stay at High Beach, a mental institution located on the outskirts of London in 1837. Along with Clare, we meet Alfred Tennyson who lives nearby and a host of characters including the hospital’s owners and their two young daughters.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, I had high hopes. I cannot argue its beauty, as it is beautifully written, but the story wandered in places and never really went anywhere. However, the world that Foulds creates is quite impressive. Mental institutions of the time were horrid places. Even for the well off, the treatment of the patients within often bordered on abuse,  which lends the book a “forbidden” quality that is slightly off-putting.

The idea of a famed poet, wandering around a mental institution opens the door to all sorts of experiences, yet… the experiences are brief, not particularly life changing and sometimes, given the nature of Clare’s condition, I was not sure if something was really happening, or if it was just taking place in Clare’s mind. I appreciated this aspect of the story, because these people were mad!  You can’t rely on any of them to tell the story and so you are constantly flipping pages and rereading passages to see if you read it right the first time around.

I considered this book to be an okay read, but not great. I felt as if the story went off in too many directions and sort of left Clare’s story hanging. There is a lot going on with the children, which is interesting to a degree but that path was also never fully developed. There is a bit of romance too, which seems oddly placed in a book about madness and although there was poetry, there wasn’t enough (in my opinion).  What could have been a really great read, was just okay.

This was my pick for book club but I was not able to make the meeting. I was told, that it was a good discussion though which doesn’t surprise me as there is plenty to discuss.

Source: Purchased
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