Scan barcode
A review by kdstutzman
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
3.0
In everything that I read or heard about The Quickening Maze, the book was described as being about the poet John Clare's years in a Victorian insane asylum. This is true, I suppose, but John Clare's story line is only one of the many filaments twisted together to make the thread of this novel. It is also about Dr. Matthew Allen, the proprietor of the asylum; his teenaged daughter Hannah; another patient named Margaret, prone to religious delusions; and Alfred Tennyson, who takes up residence nearby when his brother enters the asylum. At first I spent some time trying to decide which one of these characters' stories was most important, but Foulds gives them all equal weight. The stories don't intersect much, either; Foulds seems comfortable simply allowing them to exist parallel to each other.
I wasn't surprised to learn that Adam Foulds is a poet. The best parts of The Quickening Maze are his short, sharp observations. Take, for example, his description of the patients in the asylum, "shuffling, drowsy as smoked bees." Or this: "the forest made its little eating sounds." There are many of these moments in the book, little phrases that make you stop and say, "Oh. Oh yes. That is what a forest sounds like--I had never thought of it that way!" It was a pleasure to read.
Dr. Allen was the most compelling character for me, and at moments I wished that Foulds had decided to make him a primary character--I could happily have read a novel just about his life. Foulds portrays him as brilliant and charismatic, but also impractical and unfocused. He gets bored easily and courts risk. Foulds does a wonderful job of showing how he has built his asylum with himself as its center, and the disintegration that begins when he withdraws his attention from it. We get little hints of his strange upbringing in the Sandemanian religious sect, and his contentious relationship with his brother. Watching Dr. Allen slowly destroy everything he's built gives the second half of the book a drive that the first half lacks.
The Quickening Maze is artfully constructed, and I'm glad I read it, but in the end it didn't grab hold of me as tightly as I thought it might.
I wasn't surprised to learn that Adam Foulds is a poet. The best parts of The Quickening Maze are his short, sharp observations. Take, for example, his description of the patients in the asylum, "shuffling, drowsy as smoked bees." Or this: "the forest made its little eating sounds." There are many of these moments in the book, little phrases that make you stop and say, "Oh. Oh yes. That is what a forest sounds like--I had never thought of it that way!" It was a pleasure to read.
Dr. Allen was the most compelling character for me, and at moments I wished that Foulds had decided to make him a primary character--I could happily have read a novel just about his life. Foulds portrays him as brilliant and charismatic, but also impractical and unfocused. He gets bored easily and courts risk. Foulds does a wonderful job of showing how he has built his asylum with himself as its center, and the disintegration that begins when he withdraws his attention from it. We get little hints of his strange upbringing in the Sandemanian religious sect, and his contentious relationship with his brother. Watching Dr. Allen slowly destroy everything he's built gives the second half of the book a drive that the first half lacks.
The Quickening Maze is artfully constructed, and I'm glad I read it, but in the end it didn't grab hold of me as tightly as I thought it might.