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The Quickening Maze (2009)

by Adam Foulds(Favorite Author)

3.15 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0224087460 (ISBN13: 9780224087469)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Jonathan Cape

review 1: Amazing novel about the several characters living at the madman's institute directed by Dr Allen: the doctor and his family, wife, daughters and son, several patients among who the poets John Clare and Alfred Tennyson. Remarkably clear style if writing, which requires the reader not to rush through as every word is chosen with care by the author, a poet himself. The theme seems to be how human fantasy set loose can lead to disaster: financially or psychologically. Complete freedom may not be a thing to wish for after all.
review 2: This won't be for everyone, but having a background in Victorian lit, I appreciated it. The story is told from multiple viewpoints (though more fluidly than is currently done now where writers tend to go chapter by chapter with diffe... morerent characters) of characters that are living in and around an insane asylum. Foulds drew on actual history for some of the story. At one point, the Tennyson brothers, the poet John Clare, and the "mad doctor" Matthew Allen were all together in the asylum that Allen ran. The prose here was a departure from some of the stuff I've been reading recently. It was opaque, sometimes meandering, but very evocative, especially during the passages where Foulds deals with the natural world. The struggle at the core of the novel is the conflict between the natural world - the world of gypsies, poets, witches, spirits, and, well, nature - and the mechanical/industrialized world. At the asylum, the worlds are coming together and fighting for primacy. Characters like John Clare yearn to be free from the confines of the asylum and its rules and to be back into the wild and untamed world, but that too is under threat. The common land is shrinking, and estates are being partitioned off to make way for roads and railways. The old ways of life are being eroded. At the same time, Dr. Allen is trying to pursue the mechanical, as a business venture that ultimately fails him. The way that the characters interpret and deal with these changes can seem maddening, and the fact that some of them are already mad, increases the reader's sense of confusion and isolation. If you're into period pieces, and nonlinear narration, you might want to give this one a try. less

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