First, an announcement. As previously mentioned, from next month Scott Pack and I will be running a monthly literary event in Windsor, the Firestation Bookswap. Tickets for the August 20th event are now on sale for a measly £5. We'll be dragging some sofas out of the props cupboard, brewing up a pot of tea, and discussing all manner of topics, including but not remotely limited to books, with guests including the new queen of blockbuster fiction Jessica Ruston and associate editor of the Observer, biographer, memoirist and novelist Robert McCrum. Information on how to get to the venue can be found on this highly informative page. I can confirm that it is very easy to get to from London. Less easy, perhaps, from some of the other places readers of this blog come from: Canada; Australia; Mozambique... Which is why I have decided to run a monthly Virtual Firestation on this blog, instead of the book club. I know, very sad. But think of it as a new, advanced book club! A month in advance I'll post up the names of our guests, so that those who are interested can investigate, and even read, their work. Before the event, anybody who has any questions or comments for our guests can post them here. Then afterwards, I'll do a post writing up the event, and open it out to discussion in the comments box.
Meanwhile, this month's book club book was Asylum by Patrick McGrath. Like an eejit, I have come down to Dorset without my copy. Fortunately it is a memorable read. In 1959, a young woman, Stella, is brought by her husband to live within the grounds of the hospital for the criminally insane where he is deputy superintendent. While there, she falls under the spell of a highly charismatic but dangerous murderer, Edgar. They have a passionate affair, and escape the hospital together. Edgar's sanity begins to crack; Stella begins to suspect she may be in danger at his hands; and the law and her family are on her trail. What transpires is a tragic indictment of love that can neither be lived nor denied.
What I remember finding most disturbing about the book was its vision of love as an obsessive, destructive force, bringing not joy and redemption, but the intense desire for the possession of, and even a murderous consumption of, the other. It reminded me very much of Wuthering Heights in its wilderness setting and its portrayal of the addictive, unshakable qualities of passionate love. Also in its seemingly cool narrator, reminiscent of Nellie Dean, but who by the end turns out to be just as twisted and implicated in the destructive force of passion as his patients. I am brought back to the question I posed when I suggested this book a month ago: is love itself a form of insanity?
Over to you.
Bits & Pieces
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There's an evolutionary biology theory that says that love (or at least thumping heart OMG romantic love) is in effect temporary insanity of a sort; Pinker has something on this in 'How the Mind Works', called 'Fools for Love' I think.
Well of course one of the main functions of love is to stop you from abandoning / murdering your children when they get annoying.
And even then it's sometimes not enough (-:
I'd certainly subscribe to theory that early love is a form of insanity. It's certainly selfish, and can be destructive because of that.
I can't believe I'm dragging an episode of Friends into this, but the narrative device of using the omniscient voice of the psychiatrist reminded me of Roger the shrink who briefly dated Phoebe -- you remember, the one who had everyone's psychological number and soon they couldn't stand him? Our narrator was similarly irritating. I began to wonder if I was getting the real story, which is an odd feeling to have during a novel. Granted, Stella's viewpoint would be somewhat delusional, but Peter Cleave's all-knowing, rather arrogant take on the matter began to grate after a while.
When I was twenty or so, I read a short story by Doris Lessing entitled "To Room Nineteen". I've never been able to read it again. Not because it was poorly written, it wasn't, by a long shot, but because the view into a soul devastated by depression and despair was too much to take (and maybe a little too close for comfort).
There was a point during my reading of Asylum when I was overwhelmed by that exact same feeling; it's the prelude, description, and aftermath of the most tragic event in the whole novel, and do you know what makes it all the more tragic? It's swept aside by the obsession that is the focus of the plot. The most innocent victim of all those mistakes is clearly only a footnote. I gather from Marie's last comment that she may have picked up a similar sentiment?
I've noticed more than once that reviewers (including Marie, of course, so we need to take this seriously, this being her benign dictatorship) of Asylum refer to the similarity between love and insanity. This is because what we've been led to believe is love, from romance films to pop songs, is sexual love which is only a tiny aspect of love; it is not love itself. The Scottish duo The Proclaimers have it right: "Romantic love rots the brain, no doubt about it --- you're out of your mind!" Stella doesn't love Edgar any more than he loves her. She is obsessed with him, and eventually her own dissatisfaction with her life leads her into the disastrous affair which destroys more lives than her own. The question is not: "Is love like insanity?"; it's "How mentally ill was this woman to begin with, that this was able to go so far and so over the edge?"
Verdict: As with "To Room Nineteen", I won't be reading this one again. Not because it's awful, because it isn't, but because my frail psyche needs some rather more hopeful nourishment these days...
I agree with Persephone - I think it's clear that you are not getting the real story in 'Asylum' - you are getting Peter's version of Stella's version, and Peter is revealed at the end to be very much an unreliable narrator, for all his clinical composure. The true victim of the story is a footnote because he is of no importance to Peter.
Re love / sex / insanity, I think we need more words for love, like the Greeks had. Our one word "love" cannot cover all the states it is meant to, and it's very damaging for us to try to believe and act as if they are all the same thing.
Because of the hint Marie gave in the original post about this book, I was looking for that hidden, other story all along. Which meant that I was suspicious of the narrator right from the start. Which wasn't a bad way to read the book, really. Details about Peter are only doled out slowly and this makes him an even curiouser window into the story.
I enjoyed the writing in this book a lot, it is so clear and the (pompous, clinical) voice of the narrator so perfectly executed. It feels like you are reading his case notes (maybe that's the idea?). I was really struck by the... well without giving any spoilers, the most horrific scene in the book. As mentioned by others, what's most striking is how little impact it seems to have on the narration of the tale (as you say, because he matters so little to Peter, and, I would argue, even to Stella, at least at that point).
Even though I fully agree that the word "love" covers a huge range of feelings and relationships, I would not consider this to be a book about love. I see it more as a book exploring warped substitutions for love. Everyone (with the exception of Charlie) was using everyone else for their own selfish reasons. This is obviously an oversimplification but Max needed a (wife-shaped) piece for his puzzle, Edgar needed a muse, Peter needed another curiosity for his collection... and I think Stella needed refuge (well, asylum). I agree, too, that the teller of the tale is unreliable, so it may also be true that what we are getting is what happens when clinicians try to quantify love... but I would find it hard to believe that anyone in this story was really acting out of love.
Very good book, but very grim! I will have to follow it up with something a bit more fun : )
One of the interesting things about this book for me is just how unsympathetic all the characters are. There is certainly an underlying period condemnation of Stella as a sexually active woman: her husband is clearly repelled by her desire and her passionate sexual relationship with another man (and a patient to boot!). Peter has his own creepy sexual fixations and that last line...ugh! Stella herself is hard to warm to: selfish, childish, passive. I found it difficult to decide when she tips over from repressed and frustrated (perhaps when she begins her affair) to clearly unbalanced (allowing her landlord to use her as his sexual outlet, ignoring the risk to her life, and of course the anti-climactic climactic scene).
The clinical descriptions of asylum life were pretty disturbing. I wonder how much has changed?
On the whole, gripping and compelling and grim.
Just a question about this Firestation thing: I'm three time zones further away from you than usual (making a grand total of eight), and a quick check of the Greater Victoria Public Library reveals, alas, no titles by Jessica Ruston, but 6 titles by Robert McCrum, the most recent being his 2004 biography of Wodehouse. Do you have a recommendation?
Word verification: "vallvaa", which I take to be a mountain echo anatomical reference, or a rather questionable hiking song.
Persephone, I too will be new to McCrum's books, though not his journalism, so I can't give you informed advice, but my plan is to start with 'My Year Off' which is his recent memoir of recovering from a stroke.
Suits me! I'm sort of in the middle of reading The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. I say "sort of" because I left the book in Ottawa, so won't be resuming it for six weeks. Anyway, it's about brain plasticity which relates to all sorts of challenges: strokes, brain injury, learning disabilities, and as a "special needs mum", this is something I need to know more about...
Sigh. Your post came on the same day as a text from Waterstone's saying 'come and collect the book you ordered' so, yet again, I have missed the deadline.
Nearly (but not quite) as bad as skipping to the end of the book before reading the whole thing, I read the comments here before I've even opened the damned book.
Oh dear. Somehow I feel 'Asylum' is already doomed to join the shelf sub-titled 'books I really, really must get round to reading some day'.
Pauline: read the first page and then see if you can resist reading the whole thing...
Persephone wrote: The question is not: "Is love like insanity?"; it's "How mentally ill was this woman to begin with, that this was able to go so far and so over the edge?"
Verdict: As with "To Room Nineteen", I won't be reading this one again. Not because it's awful, because it isn't, but because my frail psyche needs some rather more hopeful nourishment these days...
Utterly agree: there was a psychological damage to everyone involved (except the aforementioned innocent) that I felt was never fully resolved. And true - I'm not sure I would re-read even though I thought it an incredibly well written book.
So - thoughts.
My first note in this book is 'who is this narrator?' and it really REALLY bugged me. Fact-fans: its page 31 before we get a first name and page 39 before a surname is filled in (unless I was being very unobservant). And truthfully I wanted to fill HIM in by the time I got to the end of the novel.
I kept trying to remind myself that this was crucially set in a different world (in terms of period) with different social norms and expectations about the role and behaviour of women. I wanted to hold onto the idea that I couldn't condemn Stella just for being sexually active and wanting more emotional responsiveness in her relationship to the work.
And that's true but it isn't enough. She is off the rails at the start and the presence of Edgar just provides a manipulative vent for this obsessiveness. But everyone here behaves inexcusably badly. To themselves and each other. I didn't fully guess where the narrative would end up, but alarm bells rang on that fullsome description of Stella by Cleave. It drips with obsession.
There's an exchange early on between Stella and Edgar about whether he is mad, and if not he "shouldn't really be here". If you take the 'here' to be the asylum there is a strong sense that the 'there-ness' of the place is both wrong and right for all the adult figures (its just not clear any of them should be in power over 'inmates': even if this is set in an age where frankly they knew even less about what to do with patients and how to 'fix them'). Stella is there in an adjunct professional capacity due to her husband's work - but her vulnerability to Edgar clearly suggests something wrong was underlying in the first place. I'd especially call into question Cleave's position: perhaps its his omniscient narrator role but I'd definitely prefer him to be on the inside not as a therapist. His disassociative analysis of the impact of Stella on Edgar's psychological progress is just jarring: what is he bothered about - Stella or the success of his therapy on Edgar?! Cleave takes everything so personally: "I don't think she was actively working against me" he 'thoughtfully' considers at one point, reflecting on her reports of she and Edgar. And Cleave is nigh obsessive in his 'watching' of Stella - under the guise of caring. Meh. In that respect I should have anticipated his later behaviour. For a doctor in psychiatry he sure as hell doesn't seem very able to identify problems - when Stella is found in London she declares "you don't know what harm I've come too". She may be physically 'in one piece' but inside, emotionally even she can recognise that she is damaged. Cleave brushes it off.
Bastard.
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