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The Quickening Maze: A Novel
The Quickening Maze: A Novel
The Quickening Maze: A Novel
Audiobook6 hours

The Quickening Maze: A Novel

Written by Adam Foulds

Narrated by Graeme Malcolm

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Based on real events, The Quickening Maze won over UK critics and readers alike with its rapturous prose and vivid exploration of poetry and madness. In 1837, after years of struggling with alcoholism and depression, the great nature poet John Clare finds himself in High Beach-a mental institution located in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London. It is not long before another famed writer, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and grows entwined in the catastrophic schemes of the hospital's owner, the peculiar Dr. Matthew Allen, his lonely adolescent daughter, and a coterie of mysterious local characters. With lyrical grace, the cloistered world of High Beach and its residents are brought richly to life in this enchanting book. "Exceptional . earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic-the word-perfect fruit of a poet's sharp eye and novelist's limber reach."-Times (London)
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 5, 2010
ISBN9781449836726
The Quickening Maze: A Novel
Author

Adam Foulds

ADAM FOULDS was born in 1974, took a Creative Writing M.A. at the University of East Anglia, and now lives in South London. Foulds is the recipient of the 2008 Costa Poetry Award, for his book-length narrative poem, The Broken Word, as well as the 2008 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the 2008 Somerset Maugham Award, The Southbank Show Award for Literature and a 2007 Betty Trask Award. His novel The Quickening Maze was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. And it was announced at the 2013 London Book Fair that he is included on Granta's annual list of Best Young British Novelists, alongside Zadie Smith, Steven Hall, Tahmima Anam and Ross Raisin.

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Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Clever and poetic. Perhaps too much so.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In The Quickening Maze, Adam Foulds dramatized the real-life events surrounding the 1840 stay of “celebrity” inmates and visitors at an asylum located in England’s Epping Forest. Foulds renders the area so well that you can almost smell the damp soil and finger the lace ferns. Here delusional inmate and “peasant poet” John Clare sneaks away to roam the countryside, camps with the local gypsies and tries to return to his imagined wife, Mary, actually a childhood sweetheart who has been dead for years. Alfred Tennyson lodges nearby to visit his inmate brother, walks the woods in contemplation and castes his financial lot with the asylum’s owner, Dr. Matthew Allen. Allen stakes his, and his family’s, future on a risky business venture to overcome hidden past failures. His teenaged daughter, Hannah, attempts, through an imagined relationship with Tennyson, to pull herself out of adolescence.These well-drawn characters swirl around each other in scene after well-crafted scene…but to what end? (**The following is mild spoiler.**) A few days after finishing the book I reread several passages and noticed a moment, a minor realization made by one of the characters, buried in the last ten pages or so of the book: “To love the life that was possible: that was also a freedom.” This is likely the crux of Foulds’ story. This wasn’t my favorite of the 2009 Booker Shortlist—I thought it needed more of a narrative push—but it’s compelling enough for me to look for more of Foulds’ work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Having bought this book more or less "accidentally" in a 3 for 2 deal package, I was quickly drawn into the slow pace and almost dreamy atmosphere that seems to spread over the pages. An added bonus was the rediscovery of John Clare's poems, the general feeling of which to me seems to be well mirrored in Foulds' novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A beautifully written, terribly sad novel set in private mental institution in 19th century England. It touches on the lives of the doctor who founded and runs the institution, his family and friends, and some of the patients therein. One of the patients is nature poet John Clare, and one of the doctor's friend's is a young Alfred Tennyson, whose brother is also a patient, but the book is as much about science as poetry, as much about ambition, in various forms, as madness.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Using the frame of seven consecutive seasons, this story of the denizens of an English mental asylum is told in an episodic dreamlike manner. Flitting from inmates,to the members of the family that owns it, to their friends and relatives and back again,the narrative is less a straightforward story and more a glimpse inside the minds of the characters. The real life poets John Clare and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are among the characters and the insights into poetic inspiration are most interesting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This neat, sensual novel by Foulds is unassuming, yet very assured. Paradoxically, there's a lot in it, but at the same time not much. There's no central narrative as such, and the threads he weaves peter out rather than reaching genuine catharsis. It leaves you with a book somewhat like a piece of granite flecked with mica; the sparkles are arresting but you can't really bring them together to make something of it. John Clare, a "peasant poet" has been committed to the asylum of Dr Matthew Allen, following a breakdown that stems from the fiscal and psychological pressures of his lifestyle. Dr Allen is also treating one Septimus Tennyson, brother of up-and-coming poet, Alfred - in addition to perfecting a new machine which will assure his family's future prospects. Other characters drift in and out of these three main narratives, Dr Allen's seventeen year old daughter, the trials of another "patient" Margaret, and Allen's son Fulton. On reflection, it's impressive how many small stories Foulds manages to weave into this slender book - a meagre 250 pages with very generous margins. It may be obvious my summary doesn't include any through-line, as such, and neither does the book, to its ultimate detriment I feel. While all the characters are given a more or less satisfactory amount of closure, it's difficult to pinpoint any over-arching theme to The Quickening Maze, and it gives the book an aimless feel at times.On the positive side, I wouldn't care about closure if the characterisation wasn't so good. Foulds draws his characters with economy but thoroughly. His prose is observational in the main, intimate at times but ever separate. However, it manages to avoid the feeling of coldness this approach can sometimes engender. You care about John, the egotistical Dr Allen, and even the stuffy, grief-struck Alfred.Additionally, Foulds avoids the common poet-turned-novelist mistake of stupidly purple prose. The Quickening Maze is a very tactile book, a real feast for the senses - but never at the expense of pacing, dialogue etc. Again, it comes back to that observational voice; Foulds has an excellent eye, but he limits it to describing what's actually there, avoiding overlong and fantastical extrapolations. The result is a book where you can really feel what the characters are feeling. It's a shame this interesting style wasn't put to use on something a bit more ambitious. The Quickening Maze has its share of passions certainly, but a grander, more vocal vision would have resulted in a more thought-provoking novel. Nonetheless, Foulds is one to watch in the future.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A brilliant, lapidary rumination on nature, poetry and the relationship between art and insanity.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The setting for this historical novel is Epping Forest, just outside of London, in the 1840s. Dr. Matthew Allen, an apothecary and polymath with a checkered past, runs an institution for the mentally ill based on Christian reformist teachings. The asylum is highly regarded, but Allen and his family live beyond their means. The most famous patient at the High Beach Private Asylum is John Clare, the "peasant poet", who is battling alcoholism, melancholia and probably schizophrenia.Dr. Allen’s newest patient, Septimus Tennyson, arrives at the asylum, accompanied by his brother and emerging poet, Alfred. Hannah Allen’s teenaged daughter, falls in love with Alfred, and seeks to win his attention in order to escape from the boredom and confinement at the asylum. Dr. Allen needs to be able to pay for his eldest daughter’s wedding, and with the financial support of the Tennysons, designs a mass production engine that will make him a rich man -- or send him back to the poor house.The action in this novel starts slowly, as Foulds introduces a number of major and minor characters that seem to be initially unnecessary, but their importance to the novel becomes apparent as the novel progresses. The loosely interwoven stories come together nicely in the second half of the book; I read the last 2/3 of the book at a single sitting, and was captivated until the final page. I thought I would like this book, since it dealt with mental illness and concepts about its treatment in the mid-19th century. These topics were not heavily discussed, but I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and its diverse set of characters.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Quickening Maze is another novel from the Booker Prize Longlist. Foulds is a poet as well as a novelist, and poetry runs deep in his book. John Clare, noted Romantic poet, is one of the main characters, as is Alfred Tennyson, my personal favourite Victorian poet. Clare is a patient at a mental institution run by Matthew Allen, a man of large visions and zero money skills. Another patient is Septimus Tennyson, Alfred's brother. Alfred lives nearby, and is the focus of Hannah Allen's (Matthew's duaghter) teenage crush.The Quickening Maze is poetic not only in its subject matter, but also its writing. Foulds' prose is beautiful, and often reads like verse. This is the novel's main strength, with its downfall being the plot. In my opinion, Foulds was more preoccupied with how to write than what to write. His novel suffers from almost no plot, and in the end I felt Foulds says very little. Again, his writing is exceptional, and the ramblings of the clearly troubled John Clare was a compelling look at someone suffering from mental illness. Beyond this, however, I felt like the 260 page book contained very little substance.Perhaps The Quickening Maze sits lower in my opinion having been read immediately following Byatt's excellent The Children's Book - a novel that balances flawless writing with a twisty plot. Nevertheless, I still maintain that it is more poetry than novel - and even as poetry, I'm not sure it has much to say.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is another in the Booker list - this time the shortlist! I enjoyed it more than the last book I read [Not Untrue and Not Unkind] but it was still a bit of a struggle. The book is based on real people e.g. Tennyson and John Clare. I must confess I did not know of the latter so perhaps some of my enjoyment was diminished through ignorance. The story concerns Dr. Matthew Allen's family, his Asylum and its inmates. The bits I found interesting were John Clare's escapades with local gypsies - particularly the account of cooking up hedgehogs in clay - "hotchiwitchis". The character of Allen's youngest daughter Abigail is endearing. She seems perhaps the only one who doesn't seem at all mad or slightly deranged like most of the adults - some are mad with grief, some with love, some with religion. I'm not quite sure what Dr Allen's variety of derangement is - pride perhaps? His daughter Hannah is deranged with boredom and composes lists of subjects for conversation on the offchance she should meet a suitable suitor. I learned some new words - nacreous - meaning pearly - and Gules - meaning red - a Heraldic term. So some parts of this book will stick with me but all in all Brooklyn is still my favourite even though it didn't make it to the shortlist.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For the last four or five years, I've bought the Booker shortlist. I usally only manage to read 4-5 of them, although I did get through the lot last year and was impressed with the crop. This is the first of the 2009 cohort and it's not a bad start at all. This is a fictionalised version of various events that occurred at an asylum on the outskirts of London in the 1840s run by Dr Matthew Allen. There's no real plot, rather a series of stories told from the point of view of the patients (including the poet John Clare), the Doctor and his family and others such as Alfred Tennyson, whose brother was a patient. These stories interact a little but are generally quite contained. The effects is a rather disjointed narrative skipping from one person to another, often rapidly. Probably it was intended to reflect Clare's schizophrenia (which is very well described).The narrative technique is unusual and didn't quite do it for me, perhaps because the book is so short that it is difficult to really get into any of the individual characters. However, this deficiency is made up for by the quality of the writing. Foulds is, I would guess, a poet at heart. Unlike some poets who try their hand at novels, he avoids purple prose while retaining a degree of lyricism where appropriate. Some passages are really outstanding and his ability to pick exactly the right word in any given sentence provides a rare degree precision. This is Foulds' second novel and I look forward to the next one. As he matures as a novelist and becomes able to focus on getting the narrative right he will be a very good writer, maybe even a great one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set across seven seasons, beginning in 1840, The Quickening Maze is a novel about imprisonment – and how the characters involved each try to escape it. In Epping Forest, outside of London, Dr. Matthew Allen runs High Beach Asylum, where one of his most notable patients is John Clare, the “peasant poet”, who has descended into insanity and is plagued by a loss of his own identity (often believing he’s someone else, for example, Lord Byron). In a 2004 review of Jonathan Bate’s biography about John Clare, Edward Hirsch notes that “Clare's poetry intimately chronicles a world that was rapidly disappearing, that was systematically divided up into rectangular plots of land, fenced off and restricted, enclosed.” Clare lives in the past, with his dreams of getting out of the confines of the asylum, back to nature and to his past, where he was the most happiest. But it’s not just Clare who feels imprisoned in Epping Forest. Dr. Allen, a former debtor, has been facing the fact that he needs more money, and comes up with the idea of enlisting investors for an invention that will hopefully put more money in his coffers and solve all of his money problems. There’s also Allen’s daughter Hannah, who thinks she’s in love with poet Alfred Tennyson, whose brother is spending time at the asylum for melancholy. Hannah dreams of falling in love, marrying, and leaving her current life and escaping, as did her sister who married and hasn’t looked back. There’s Margaret, who suffers from religious delusions, looking for help from above to escape her own brutal treatment. The book is rather short, but don’t let that fool you. Foulds is an amazing writer and his characters are all rather well drawn down to the smallest detail. His writing is sparse, but he manages to leave the reader with pictures of people who have become lost. It doesn't need to be any longer -- for its size, the book is very intense. I’ve never read anything by this author before, but I will be looking for more in the future. This is a wonderful book, and I would highly recommend it, but maybe not to readers of primarily general or mainstream fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
     I enjoyed this. It's one of those books where nothing much happens, but everything happens. There are no obvious heroes or villains, it's stocked with people doing what people do, some of them are nicer than others, but they're all just human. Set in an asylum where John Clare, the rural poet, is locked up due to his mental instability. For someone used to walking in the open to see the far horizon, this is torture of the worst kind. It also feature his fellow inmates, the asylum's owner and family, Alfred Tennyson and his brother - who's in the asylum for treatment of depression (in effect - they call it melancholia) and other assorted locals.

    It's written in a manner that could be seen as disjointed - you get a short chapter of an individuals actions, then move on to someone else. The separate strands start to draw together at the end, but it's not a linear narrative. If you need a plot driven book - this won't appeal - it's far more a gentle meander with snapshots of the world as you pass. The writing was, however, almost poetic in itself, lyrical would describe it.

    The book has a way of making you think who is really mad here. Is it John, who thinks he is several people(although usually thinks he's only one at a time)? Is it Margaret, who thinks she's on a mission from God to save souls? Is it Matthew, who allows an idea to consume him utterly? And who gets to judge what is sanity?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Quickening Maze is a work of historical fiction centring around the convergence of three fascinating minds at High Beech Private Asylum; the poet John Clare, the Asylum’s owner, Dr. Matthew Allen, a gambler and entrepreneur, to whom moderate success is a means to greater; and Alfred Tennyson, who is staying nearby while his brother, Septimus, is under Allen’s care. The Tennysons invest heavily in Allen’s latest idea; John Clare writhes with a turbulent inner life of mixed identities and confusion of his own past, and Allen attempts to manage the asylum and his unravelling scheme.This novel stopped just shy of being amazing; Clare’s extremes of hyper clarity and deep torment were fiercely written, both beautiful and unrelenting, perhaps because the author, too, is a poet. The passages where he wanders off and spends time with the local population of gypsies, or travellers, are particularly expressive (and I loved learning that they call hedgehogs ‘hotchiwitchis’). But the identity of the book itself also seemed fractured. Other than John Clare, no one person seemed examined satisfyingly, except perhaps Hannah, Allen’s seventeen year old daughter, who I did enjoy a great deal; she was flawed and hopeful and the most real of the characters. My favourite parts were hers, including this berry picking moment:‘Here’, he offered her his hat‘But they’ll stain.’‘The inside. And anyway, what’s a hat?’Hannah, trying to respond to the question, found herself suddenly philosophically stumped, her mind full of abstract hat.The other characters, presented in cameo after cameo, failed to provide much interest or illumination. Lionel Shriver is quoted in review as saying of the author ‘He draws a walk-on character in a few deft strokes’. Well, yes, he does, I agree, but Foulds also somehow manages to populate the novel with too many characters who are in a limbo between this and real depth. For a book so focused on self identity, this seemed a flaw that stood out more than it might otherwise.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Quickening Maze is a prose poem centering on the 19th Century British nature poet, John Clare. It is a story of rationality and madness based on elusive standards of behavior tied to the physical, social, and spiritual environments of rural England. Whether objective or insane, the many characters measure themselves and each other against these standards. Their perspectives separate them into the two categories of consciousness. The characters include other historical figures including a physician, a poet, and an entrepreneur. Dr. Matthew Allen is the creator of a systematic classification system for mental illness and owner/operator of a rural asylum for patients trapped inside their own incommunicable views of reality. He is successful and understanding but there is someplace he would rather be, and he will sacrifice everything to get there. Alfred Lord Tennyson is a young moody man struggling to write his early often rejected poetry. He mourns the death of his best friend and fellow poet, Arthur Hallam and delays an attempt to write a poem commemorating him. Alfred rents a house close to the asylum to lend support to his melancholic brother interred there. Thomas Rawnsley is a man of commerce who helps realize Dr. Allen's idea for a machine that can carve primarily religious wood furnishings precisely corresponding to artists' originals. He starts a campaign for the hand of Hannah, one of the daughters of the ill-fated doctor of neurasthenia. The patients represent several of the symptoms of madness described by Dr. Allen. These include delusion, repression, depression, obsession, psychosis, aggression, and mania. The distinction between the rational and mad is not always clear even though the overt behavior marks the characters as free people or patients most of the time. Poets, like John Clare, have their most creative periods when they cross over from one state to another, from the lucid to the quickening maze of words, and back again. In the novel, Tennyson has not made the commitment in his work venture beyond society's benchmarks of normality and produce his greatest works. John Clare, however, has done this for so long and so intensely that he is not able to return to normal. Clare's prolonged trips into the maze destroy his creative process at least in the commercial sense. Clare's work sent to journals from the asylum is now rejected in spite of his fame in earlier periods. I recommend this novel to readers who are interested in the creative processes of others and themselves. Like the prose poetry of Rimbaud, Adam Foulds deftly mixes straight narrative sentences with descriptions of experience using loose, sensual associations. Does art require a sacrifice of stability, temporary for many but permanent for some? Are there boundaries for your own attempts to go beyond the physical, social, and spiritual standards and and be creative in life? One conclusion of the novel is the status of people, rational or mad, mundane or interesting, observer or artist, is determined by their ability to communicate with others. Can you find the words to express your inner life to other people, to enter the quickening maze of words, or will you remain the social isolate of the asylum or the failing artist who collects rejection slips? But, be sure to assess the costs of straying too far and too long from the acceptable environmental, social, and religious standards when you talk, write, sing, dance,...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Historical fiction of nature poet, John Clare's gradual descent into madness while staying in High Beach, a mental institution in England. While he's there, he also comes into contact with Alfred Tennyson. Although Tennyson was not another patient, he was prone to moments of melancholy. Tennyson's brother, Septimus Tennyson, was a patient at the same mental institution, run by Matthew Allen.Through the multiple characters gracing this book, from Hannah, Matthew's daughter who fancies herself in love with Alfred Tennyson, to Margaret, a patient who believes that she has been called to God, to Eliza, Matthew's patient wife, to Fulton, Matthew's son, to Matthew himself, a doctor, a preacher and a would-be entrepreneur, in addition to the staff at High Beach, the reader is thrown right in the middle of the chaotic and at times, disturbing events in the institution. The disjointed chaos and the confusing emotions one experiences in reading this book was very cleverly woven by the author. Reality and fantasy compete and at times the lines between them are blurred.We are treated to bits and pieces of John Clare's poetry and to the multiple characters he believes himself to be. I wish the had been more of his poetry injected into this book, as well as that of Tennyson, but then again, this book is less of their works and more of their personalities and mental state.This is far from a happy read, but it delivers in intensity.