Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Foulds’ novel is grounded in fact. Its setting is High Beach, a licensed lunatic asylum run along enlightened principles by Dr. Matthew Allen. One way Allen intersects with literary history is through the delusional laboring-class poet John Clare, who was his patient for several years. Another intersection is through Alfred Tennyson, whose family had a history of mental illness and who took up residence nearby. Allen’s boundless energy was not confined to the treatment of the insane. He became involved in a scheme for the mass production of ecclesiastical wood carvings, and his need for investors led to the Tennyson family’s ruin. More focus on one or two characters would have given the reader something to hold on to; instead we get multiple points of view—those of not just Allen, but several of his daughters; not just John Clare, but other patients—resulting in episodes rather than sustained narrative. Still, Foulds fashions his intriguing premise into fiction with a sure sense of time and place and often lyrical prose. --Mary Ellen Quinn
Description:
From Publishers Weekly
Foulds's erudite, Booker-shortlisted debut follows three men--Dr. Matthew Allen, mad peasant poet John Clare, and prodigious pipe-smoking poet Alfred Tennyson--as their fates intertwine at the High Beach mental institution outside of 1837 London. Worried over the cost of the wedding for his eldest daughter, Matthew invents a machine to mass-produce filigreed wood furniture. Ignoring the asylum for his business pursuits, Matthew seeks investors, including the Tennyson family, of whom Alfred's brother, Septimus, is a patient at High Beach. John, meanwhile, spirals into a fantasy world fueled by his obsession with a dead childhood sweetheart, Mary. Things become complicated when John deludes himself into thinking a fellow patient is his dead love. All the while, Alfred, who is at the asylum to be near his brother, is fruitlessly pursued by Matthew's adolescent daughter, Hannah. While Alfred, unfortunately, is the least convincing character, John's madness is richly imagined, and Matthew comes off as powerfully sympathetic as he grows ever more desperate to raise funds for his business gamble. There's a manneredness to the storytelling that devotees of 19th-century British literature will appreciate.
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From
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Foulds’ novel is grounded in fact. Its setting is High Beach, a licensed lunatic asylum run along enlightened principles by Dr. Matthew Allen. One way Allen intersects with literary history is through the delusional laboring-class poet John Clare, who was his patient for several years. Another intersection is through Alfred Tennyson, whose family had a history of mental illness and who took up residence nearby. Allen’s boundless energy was not confined to the treatment of the insane. He became involved in a scheme for the mass production of ecclesiastical wood carvings, and his need for investors led to the Tennyson family’s ruin. More focus on one or two characters would have given the reader something to hold on to; instead we get multiple points of view—those of not just Allen, but several of his daughters; not just John Clare, but other patients—resulting in episodes rather than sustained narrative. Still, Foulds fashions his intriguing premise into fiction with a sure sense of time and place and often lyrical prose. --Mary Ellen Quinn