The Quickening Maze

by Adam Foulds

Book Overview

"It has been a while since I have read a book as richly sown with beauty . . . A remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose." --James Wood, The New Yorker

A visionary novel by "one of the most talented writers of his generation"--The Times Literary Supplement

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Based on real events,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143117793
• ISBN13: 9780143117797
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The Road Less Traveled

Somewhere toward the end of this inventive and imaginative novel, peasant nature poet John Clare muses about "the maze of a life with no way out, paths taken, places been." In reality -- and much of this book IS based on reality -- each of the characters within these pages will enter into a maze -- figuratively, through the twists and turns of diseased minds, and literally, through the winding paths of the nearby forest. Some will escape unscathed and others will never emerge. But all will be altered. At the start of the novel, John Clare has been incarcerated in a progressive (for the times) institution called the High Beach Private Asylum. It doesn't take long for the reader to come to the understanding that this seemingly sane poet is not unjustly imprisoned, but is in fact, stark raving mad. Shortly thereafter, John Clare is joined by Septimus Tennyson, the mad brother of the famous Alfred Lord Tennyson, who also takes up residence. The owner of the asylum -- Matthew Allen -- displays fairness to the inhabitants, yet he has demons of his own. He has escaped a dodgy past as a debtor and has lost the respect of his parsimonious older brother. One of his older daughters, Hannah, is just coming of age and has developed an unrequited crush on Tennyson. Other characters, such as the brutal right-hand man Stockdale and the delusional and fervent Margaret-turned-Mary, drift in and out of the narrative. Quickening Maze slips slightly when it delves into a subplot about a doomed mass-produce decorative woodcarvings invention, in my opinion. It helps to know that in reality, this happened, and Tennyson lost most of his inherited fortune as a result. After reading Quickening Maze, it is nearly impossible to not go running to check out what parts of this book are based on truths. Yet it does not slip enough for me to deprive the novel of its fifth rating star. Without spoilers and with a nod to the poet Robert Frost (who is NOT mentioned in this book), John Clare will try on various personage from the past, including Lord Byron and Shakespeare himself; his mind will travel "to where it bent in the undergrowth." Hannah will need to lose her path to find the one that has "perhaps the better claim". Matthew Allen will slip on his path and go back down one that he has already precariously traveled before, forgetting "how way leads on to way". And the famous Tennyson? He, too, will forge forward on the path that bcomes his destiny and he will be remembered "aged and ages hence". As Hannah states, "To love the life that was possible: that also was a freedom, perhaps the only freedom."

Amazing Insight

I was startled by the beautiful pace and elegant rhythm of the novel. It moved me deeply, from understanding different (and differently motivated) characters to sensing the seasons and moods of the English countryside. Although it is definitely an historical novel, it doesn't feel like one. On the contrary, it has an immediacy of impact. I highly recommend The Quickening Maze for anyone looking for (1) a good read or (2) a novel in which characterization and setting are made real. On a separate note, the portrayal of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was astonishing. I loved it.

Fould is to be read and watched!

Adrian Foulds is a young British poet, and is worthy of being followed. His novel tells the story of the heartbreaking poet, John Clare, in his descent into madness. At the institution in Epping Forest, where Clare wrote some of his most brilliant and moving poems, the inmate develops a relationship with a young Tennyson, as well as the chief doctor. Nature, genius, passion, and the romance of science are themes not only of the poems themselves, but also of the lives of the protagonists. A novel of great depth of feeling and thought, and a superb read."I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare

Poets and Poetry.

"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey and "The Quickening Maze" by Adam Foulds are the two most captivating novels I ever read about mental patients and the persons who look after them. Foulds uses a poetical language and by poetry he tries to understand the intricate and illogical thoughts of some of the patients. He often describes nature also and uses that as a counterpart for the asylum. The infinite forest encloses the village and the asylum so that the asylum becomes a world on its own. An attempt to free one self as an individual is made impossible by the impenetrability of the forest. This symbolizes the inability of some patients ( one of the most important is the nature poet John Clare ) to understand their personal destiny. It's not that they don't see a goal in life, they just don't know how to reach it. In the first half of the novel you get bits and pieces of several stories, each of them standing on its own with no connection with the other parts of the novel. It's almost as the language of a schizophrenic who takes pieces of several thoughts and brings them together to form a mangled and incomprehensible language. But as the novel continues everything begins to fall into place to form a story-line and a question: where is the borderline between the sane and the insane? Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, 'The Quickening Maze' centers 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.