Review: Asylum, by Patrick McGrath

I listened to the audiobook read by Sir Ian McKellen. It was pretty good. 😊

Rating:

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨

First Response:

I wanted a haunted asylum and got a haunted soul instead.

One Sentence Summary:

Stella Raphael decides to shake up her boring marriage by having an affair with one of the patients at the MAXIMUM SECURITY ASYLUM FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE where her husband works.

Tell Me More:

This book has been on my TBR list forever. I think I first looked it up back in 2014-2015-ish, when I was just getting out from under my parents’ influence and wanted to branch out into horror literature. Horror was always verboten in the household, and while I wasn’t quite ready for demon stories, I already knew I loved a good ghost story (have we talked about my love for Scooby-Doo? We have, haven’t we?). So I went googling for haunted hospitals and asylums (Haunted houses? How cliché!). I found this book, put it on my TBR, and promptly forgot about it as college life took over.

Over a decade later, here we are.

My rating bounced around from three to four to five stars as I went through the book. The opening is a little boring— but that’s also the point. Stella (the MC)’s life is boring, and her marriage is sexless. This prompts her to strike up an affair with one of the mental patients at the asylum where her husband works. Edgar Stark is at the asylum because he murdered his wife and mutilated her corpse, but Stella doesn’t seem to care all that much about that…

This book is a five star read because it’s probably one of the most depressing stories I’ve ever read, and I expect it will haunt me for a while to come. Like I said, I found this book looking for haunted asylum stories, and while it is certainly NOT about a haunted asylum, it is definitely about the lingering effects of bad decisions— you might say it’s about how those decisions haunt us.

There came a point while I was reading this book where I decided I don’t think I should ever want to read it again. By the end, I didn’t have any real sympathy for any of the characters, and it was only McGrath’s skill at storytelling that made me feel any twinge of sadness at the finale of Stella’s story. Don’t get me wrong— I think all of this is by design— but it was still unpleasant to read. Asylum gets five 🎨 s (Edgar is an artist, so it’s topical) because it was a deeply affecting novel. It certainly made me feel all the bad feelings. Unlike most of my 5 ⭐️ reviews, though, I don’t know if I’ll ever pick it up again.