The Quickening Maze
Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, "The Quickening Maze" centres on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare. After years struggling with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, Clare finds himself in High Beach Private Asylum - an institution run on reformist principles which would later become known as occupational therapy. At the same time another poet, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life and catastrophic schemes of the asylum's owner, the peculiar, charismatic Dr Matthew Allen. For John Clare, a man who had grown up steeped in the freedoms and exhilarations of nature, who thought 'the edge of the world was a day's walk away', a locked door is a kind of death. This intensely lyrical novel describes his vertiginous fall, through hallucinatory episodes of insanity and dissolving identity, towards his final madness.
4.3 out of 5 based on 10 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
272 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
May 2009 |
| ISBN |
978-0224087469 |
| Publisher |
Jonathan Cape |
| |
Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, "The Quickening Maze" centres on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare. After years struggling with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, Clare finds himself in High Beach Private Asylum - an institution run on reformist principles which would later become known as occupational therapy. At the same time another poet, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life and catastrophic schemes of the asylum's owner, the peculiar, charismatic Dr Matthew Allen. For John Clare, a man who had grown up steeped in the freedoms and exhilarations of nature, who thought 'the edge of the world was a day's walk away', a locked door is a kind of death. This intensely lyrical novel describes his vertiginous fall, through hallucinatory episodes of insanity and dissolving identity, towards his final madness.
Watch a video of Adam Foulds talking about his book on the Guardian website
Reviews
The Times
Tom Gatti
"Foulds's exceptional novel is like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic - the word-perfect fruit of a poet's sharp eye and a novelist's limber reach."
07/05/2009
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The Sunday Times
Nick Rennison
"The world he evokes, so different to the landscapes of his other books, is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means. It is impossible to guess where Foulds will travel next in his fiction, but it is safe to assume that the journey with him will be well worth taking."
03/05/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Neel Mukherjee
"For a slim book, The Quickening Maze is generously peopled and Foulds’ technique, of successive short, vivid scenes, creates a world entire as the characters criss-cross each other’s paths. One of the more memorable achievements of the novel is the sure way Foulds gives every single character ... a deep and deft roundedness... But the chief pleasure of the book is its prose: exquisite yet measured, precise, attentive to the world."
07/05/2009
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The Guardian
Andrew Motion
"Without any of the clunking that is generally audible in stories featuring real people, the book focuses on Allen, Clare and Tennyson, allowing them to seem both fully imagined characters and recognisably actual figures. It's the accuracy of Foulds's writing that guarantees this - that, and his sympathy with the people he's presenting."
02/05/2009
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The Literary Review
Philip Womack
"The Quickening Maze shows a dreamy, contemplative side to his writing, and lacks nothing of the strong, vivid characterisation of both of his previous works... Foulds’s technique is cinematic: he lingers on characters as they sew, lie underneath trees, go for walks or have visions. Yet at the same time he manages to create a sense of compulsion – the scene in which Seymour’s father descends upon the asylum is gripping and surprising. Foulds has also written a novel about nature..."
01/05/2009
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The Daily Mail
Clare Colvin
"A seamless blend of historical fact and fiction... Foulds's writing has a poetic intensity and his descriptions of the autumnal woods around the asylum are as piercingly keen as his insight into the minds of the patients, the doctor and his family."
26/05/2009
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The Independent
Simon Kövesi
"As with Pat Barker's First World War trilogy, Foulds seems desperate to convince us that he knows his chosen setting very well... Yet when loosened from the chains of history, this poetic novel soars in a voice almost as euphonic and confident as Tennyson's, in images of nature almost as plaintive and visceral as Clare's. All is raised in pitch and definition by the prurient excitement of Foulds's very 21st-century lust for life."
29/05/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Lionel Shriver
"The Quickening Maze is an involving, readable account based on historical events, but not constricted by them. The novel is poetic, but shows regard for plot. Most of all, the author respects the torments of the mentally ill and though two poets feature here, he does not conjure insanity as an exalted state of literary enlightenment. "
14/05/2009
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The Financial Times
Adrian Turpin
"Foulds wisely resists the temptation to turn Clare into an idiot savant, lunacy as the flip side of genius. The horror of a disintegrating mind is also subtly conveyed through fractured internal monologue... At times it feels as if Foulds is trying to cram in too much. The supporting cast of gypsies, brutal attendants and lunatics revolves with indecent haste. But that’s to quibble. The Quickening Maze is distinguished by an economy of style that hides its lyrical heart."
08/06/2009
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The New Statesman
Fatema Ahmed
"Although Allen is an engaging figure in his own right, his interactions with Tennyson are some of the most awkward parts of the novel, which suffers at such moments from the problems all historical novels have to fight against: the conveying of information through dialogue and the provision of period detail... The novel’s most involving strand is the story of Hannah Allen... and The Quickening Maze reads most convincingly as a novel when Hannah is present."
14/05/2009
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