Book Review: Asylum

The Asylum by John Harwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I think Harwood deserves a bigger readership among historical fiction devotees than he has. This is the second of his novels I've read (also The Seance), and I admire how deeply Harwood gets into the feel of the period. The female narrator awakes one morning in an asylum with no idea how she got there, and no memory of the days before. What memories she DOES have, however, seem to belong to a woman the doctor of the asylum claims she cannot be: Georgina Ferrars--a woman who is safely at home, and who claims that the woman in the asylum is an imposter.

How the narrator discovers the secrets surrounding her, and her real identity, make for a compelling read. Harwood captures very well the helpless frustration of the heroine, and raises questions in the readers' mind as to the veracity of her memories. The book was very hard to put down, and I had many guesses as the truth, and was only partly right.

The biggest flaw is the ending, which felt a bit over-the-top to me, but the story is a good one, and Harwood tackles it with aplomb.



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