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Asylum
Asylum
Author: Patrick McGrath
From our most celebrated writer of the psychological thriller comes this nerve-wracking yet eerily beautiful work of erotic obsession and madness. — In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting--a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Beautiful and headstrong, Stella soon falls under...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780792733331
ISBN-10: 0792733339
Publication Date: 10/31/2004
Edition: Unabridged
Rating:
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0 stars, based on 0 rating
Publisher: Sound Library
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Other Versions: Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

obsidianfire avatar reviewed Asylum on + 133 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 21
This is the first I've read of Mcgrath. His writing is very haunting and beautiful and the story stayed with me long after I read it. Very gothic.
reviewed Asylum on + 2 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Love story within the walls of an asylum and the deepening madness that affects it and the others that observe it.
reviewed Asylum on + 8 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A real page turner!! Don't start this book if you have to get up early the next morning.
screamingbirdsmom avatar reviewed Asylum on + 33 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A great read. The book's description does not do it justice. A real page-turner!
reviewed Asylum on + 4 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A glimpse into life of a woman who is yearning for passion and danger. She lives on an estate near insane persons and her husband is a psychologist. This book takes you on a journey through the desires and passions of a beautiful and headstrong woman, who is living during a time when women weren't supposed to be headstrong, or think much for themselves. She journeys from picking the vegetables in her garden and taking care of her son in her hum drum daily routine, to another exciting world filled with danger, artists, and love.
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reviewed Asylum on
I really enjoyed this book. Made into a film in 2005, which was also quite good but the book is a really good read with really good characters, well drawn. I've never forgotten the plot.
Readnmachine avatar reviewed Asylum on + 1435 more book reviews
McGrath moves the narrative along quickly and skillfully in this story of a psychiatrist's wife who enters into an obsessive and ultimately desructive affair with a patient in the hospital where her husband is the administrator. There are too many echoes of Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina here, as a woman with an acceptable if not particularly exciting marriage throws away everything for a man who is, in this case, a homicidal maniac. If that seems unlikely, it only gets worse, as every man Stella meets seems overwhelmed with a mad passion for her. Ultimately, it is tedious rather than tragic.


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