Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Nov 08, 2011

Sue rated it:

This very interesting novel covers several years in the lives of the owners and inmates of an asylum for the insane in England in the 1840s.
It is the story of the nature poet John Clare who is slowly going mad, Dr Matthew Allen, the doctor charged with his care as well as the care of many other inmates, the extended Allen family, Alfred Tennyson who has brought his melancholic brother to High Beach for treatment, and staff members who vary from benign to horrific.

The setting it More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 28, 2010

Lilian rated it:

When I began this book, I sighed with pleasure, because I knew, in the first few pages, that I was in the hands of a writer who knew what he was doing. I could feel the competence, the control of language, structure and story from the start and it never flagged.

The Quickening Maze is a novel about the people associated with a private insane asylum in 1840’s England: Dr. Matthew Allen, the director of the asylum, Hannah, his teenage daughter, the famous nature poet John Clare, who is More...

19 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 02, 2011

Jill rated it:

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 emerg More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 01, 2011

Janet added it

Having read the reviews on Amazon (as always, after finishing the book), it is interesting to see how mixed they are, provoking reactions all the way from “An insightful re-creation, beautifully written” to “Dull and immature writing”, I am firmly in the camp of the former. I don’t know whether that’s because I am very familiar with Clare, and his wonderful countryside poetry, and darker poems about his despair, having studied him for A level English Lit in 2007/08

The story is told in short sect More...

0 comments like

Nov 24, 2011

Mary Ellen rated it:

I was undecided as to three or four stars on this one. It is very well written; in particular, the author is able to write in very varied, individual voices: persons suffering from various delusions; a rather manic inventor/scientist with ethical issues; a self-involved not-yet-great poet; a teenaged girl seeking escape from her difficult and dull situation through marriage; a child simultaneously ignored and spoiled by her parents; an enraged minor nobleman... The narrative shifts from one p More...

0 comments like

Oct 31, 2011

Vanessa rated it:

Adam Foulds is a terrific writer. I read an article by him on how to write description and it was so brilliant that I immediately bought this novel.

I'm not going to share the article with you because if you read it you will instantly be able to write brilliant descriptions in your novels and that would give me too much competition while my own career is floundering.

Oh, all right, then. You've twisted my arm. You're right. Novel writing shouldn't be competitive. We should More...

0 comments like

Jul 05, 2011

Tony rated it:

Foulds, Adam. THE QUICKENING MAZE. (2009). ****.
I haven’t come across this English writer before, but the banner on the front of this book told me that it had been a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. That’s enough for me to give it a try. It’s an historical novel about a short period in the life of Tennyson when he has taken his brother to a lunatic asylum on the edge of London. He then takes up residence in a cottage near the institution to be near him. Tennyson himself has his More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 19, 2011

Vivian rated it:

The history is supposed to be accurate. It surely does read as "stranger than fiction." But this is an extremely well written novel about the stay of the unfortunate alcoholic and deeply mentall disturbed nature poet John Clare in an asylum run by the incompetent, unethical, perhaps even mad, "Dr." Matthew Allen. Pity the poor mentally ill of the time; pity them greatly. Another principal character is Alfred Tennyson who moves near the asylum to be near his brother, anoth More...

0 comments like

Mar 17, 2011

Jon rated it:

A library book which I will buy and re-read with pleasure. Told in a series of vignettes, some only a paragraph or two long, others virtual short stories, spaced over a period of less than two years. We are introduced early to the main characters--the Allen family (father, mother, three daughters and son) who run an asylum for the insane in mid nineteenth century England. Their patients include the neglected nature poet John Clare, a visionary mystic named Margaret, and Septimus Tennyson, the br More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2011

G rated it:

Beginning in the late 1830s, and set over seven seasons, Adam Foulds’ Booker shortlisted novel, The Quickening Maze tells the intertwined stories of the “Northamptonshire poet,” John Clare, the son of a farmer; Alfred Tennyson, the man who would go on to become Britain’s Poet Laureate; and the Reverend Matthew Allen, MD, the man who owned High Beach Private Asylum in Essex’s Epping Forest, where both Clare and Tennyson’s brother, Septimus, were patients.

Although Clare’s nature poetry w More...

0 comments like

Sep 27, 2010

Teresa rated it:

This account of the madness of the English poet John Clare captured my affections almost immediately. Foulds weaves Clare s story with those of the sanitarium director, Dr. Matthew Allen, and his family, as well as those of various patients in the sanitarium and Alfred Tennyson, whose brother becomes a patient. Foulds takes us inside the characters minds, letting us see the sometimes flawed logic behind the things they do.[return][return]Because the novel takes place in a sanitarium, we see t More...

0 comments like

Sep 26, 2010

Cameling rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like

Sep 24, 2010

Vernon rated it:

I was attracted by the idea of this book - essentially about John Clare one of my favourite poets, set in the asylum period which could prove interesting and written by Adam Foulds, a poet of considerable merit in his own right. So, a book to relish and enjoy.

Anyone who is conversant with Clare's work and life, knows the beauty of his poetry and the horridness of his rejections and the absurdity and difficulties of his time locked away. I thought this book would add to my knowledge More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2010

Judith rated it:

In a relatively short book Foulds convincingly and with great sensitivity explores the fragile separation between creativity and madness. Incorporating known history, biography, and actual writings of his subjects, Foulds in his characters gives us a spectrum of "mad" and "normal" clustered around the asylum where John Clare, Tennyson, and other historical personages found themselves in the late 19th century. The main points on the spectrum are defined by degress of obsession More...

0 comments like

Aug 09, 2010

Barb rated it:

Okay, some people are going to love this novel...I think that they are the same people who loved 'The Gathering' by Anne Enright. If you like poetry and literature that is on the crazy disjointed end of the spectrum this might be your cup of tea, sadly it was not mine.

This is one of those books that you think you might be able to snarf down in half a day because it's pretty short, has a large font and lots of blank pages between the chapters. But when you get into it you see that i More...

5 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 27, 2010

Eric rated it:

The Booker Prize 2009 disappointed me with its runaway winner, but per my goodreads star allocations, The Quickening Maze ran circles around Wolf Hall...and in doing so took much less time.

Here is a fragile treatment of Matthew Allen's "insane asylum" during a rough time period when John Clare and a far more widely hailed Alfred Tennyson were both on site, the latter to stay near his troubled brother and not because he was admitted as insane or disturbed himself. It should More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 23, 2010

Fleur rated it:

“He’d been sent out to pick firewood from the forest, sticks and timbers wrenched loose in the storm. Light met him as he stepped outside, the living day met him with its details, the scuffling blackbird that had its nest in their apple tree.

Walking towards the woods, the heath, beckoning away. Undulations of yellow gorse rasped softly in the breeze. It stretched off onto unknown solitudes.

He was a village boy and he knew certain things, He thought that the edge of the w More...

0 comments like

Jun 02, 2010

Eileen rated it:

Adam Foulds is a poet. His first novel, "The Quickening Maze," reminds me of works by Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner--seriously intellectual and hard work to read.

The main thread of the plot concerns poet John Clare as his rage and drinking lands him in an insane asylum. While John is there, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, accompanies his brother, Septimus, to be treated for "the English disease," melancholia (depression). Clare and Tennyson, who capture our interest More...

0 comments like

Aug 21, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

Madness is always an interesting read.

This novel is focused on a portion of the life of the "rural" poet, John Clare that was spent in an asylum in Essex in 1830s. John Clare, from humble beginnings, had some success with his early work. However, when the novelty had worn off, this immensely gifted writer experienced isolation and hardship, and finally became insane, spending some of his life in Dr. Matthew Allen's High Beach private asylum.

Alfred Lord Tennyson's brother

More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2010

Charles Dee rated it:

I had requested this from the library before they owned a copy. By the time it came in I had forgotten both why I had wanted it and what it was going to be about. So I decided to just start reading.

In what seems at first a small, genteel, 19 century mental institution, the family that runs it eagerly awaits the arrival of their new "star" patient, the melancholic brother of Alfred Tennyson. As a plus, Alfred himself will be staying nearby. The other somewhat well known pat More...

0 comments like

May 13, 2011

Heather rated it:

In the June 28, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, James Wood started a review of this book by calling it "richly sown with beauty," then going on to call Foulds's novel "a remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose." High praise, and I think The Quickening Maze lives up to it. It's the story of the poet John Clare, mad, stuck in an asylum on the edge of Epping Forest, where sometimes he's lucid and s More...

0 comments like

Jan 12, 2012

Ruth rated it:

c2009: I did not like this book - neither the story, the characters or the style of writing. I must be a total philistine as not only did this book make the list for the Man Booker and has been highly rated and recommended by a lot of big names in literature. However, as the trite saying goes - one man's chocolate is another man's spinach (ok, I made that up). Way too pretentious for my liking. Short book but time consuming to read. Ultimately, depressing and sordid. FWFTB: incarceration, alcoho More...

0 comments like

Dec 02, 2011

Texbritreader rated it:

In this excellent novel recounting the madness of poet John Clare and his stay at the progressive asylum of Dr Matthew Allen; we meet a host of others, the isolated family of Dr. Allen, assorted inmates with a variety of troubles and the poet Alfred Tennyson and his brother, the melancholic Septimus. Though fictionalized the author tells their stories deftly and with deep insight, creating fully realized characters without betraying the actual people on which they are based.

The story e More...

0 comments like

Jul 16, 2010

Tony rated it:

Foulds constructs a historical fiction in which characters explore existential possibilities that open and close, trying to break out of the maze that confines them -'the maze of life with no way out, paths taken, places been'. Asylum inmates John Clare and Margaret move in and out of madness, struggling with inner torments and worldly constraints. Mathew Allen, Asylum owner, is drawn by a propensity to gamble into investing his own and other's money in new technology, leading to his economic a More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2011

Janet rated it:

Funny, if I had not read this book was about John Clare’s descent into madness, I’d never have described the book that way myself.

To me it seemed the stories of Hannah, Tennyson and 3 of his patients Margaret, Mr. Seymore, and John Clare, were various side stories woven into and in support of the main tale. If I had to describe the focal point of the novel I’d say it was primarily about Matthew Allen who in part due to rebelling against religious inspired austerity lived beyond his More...

0 comments like

Nov 16, 2009

Leon rated it:

Adam Foulds’s first book of fiction The Truth About These Strange Times garnered very favorable reviews, and won the Betty Trask Award 2007. This second one, The Quickening Maze is just as successful, even more so when it got shortlisted for the Booker.

It is a historical fiction, just like his other shortlisted Booker candidate Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. But, unlike it, it is shorter, about a quarter of the length. But, like that booker winner again, the writing is exquisite. Just lo More...

0 comments like

Aug 06, 2010

Jen3n rated it:

Set in a comparatively progressive mental insitution in 1837 England, The Quickening Maze is less a story and more a series of snapshots of a very specific place in time.

There are several narratives throughout the novel: the asylum's owner is trying to help cure mental issues of his inamtes while trying to get backers for an invention he has laid plans for that will allow him to retire and get his family out of the crzy-folk business; the doctor's middle daughter has a huge crush on More...

0 comments like

Sep 26, 2009

Nancy rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like

Jul 21, 2010

Bart rated it:

This is an intricate and well-constructed novel that tells an excellent story and suffers only from occasional aridity.

Adam Foulds was a poet, not a novelist, till recently. Where the poet reduces and reduces and reduces, the novelist expands and expands and expands. Where the novelist, then, is advised to remove words from a second draft, the poet is advised to add them. Perhaps Foulds did not add words enough.

There is nothing breezy about this novel, though one gets More...

0 comments like

Jun 27, 2010

Bowerbird rated it:

I like poetry. I like John Clare's work and know there is a story to be told about him, starting with his early success in spite of his humble origins and then his subsequent mental illness. There must also be some interesting background on asylums of that period, but little of this came to life in this book. Instead, we get glimpes into various disturbed minds, which may befit the title but the result is total confusion. And why is Tennyson brought in? How sane is the Dr meant to be? And his More...

0 comments like