Asylum by Patrick McGrath

It's unfortunate that the synopsis on the back cover makes it sound so tawdry because this is actually a really good book. The reviews were favorable and the opening lines intriguing, so I wasn't sure what to expect. It could be anything from weird and dark to cheesy and lame. I don't know, maybe I've been influenced by Hollywood, but the notion of  an 'asylum' puts me in mind of the pre-Victorian insane asylum of the shackle and straight-jacket, whips and cages kind. Or it could go into the more current zombie/Silence-of-the-Lambs territory. But it was neither. Asylum is a psychological thriller of a more cerebral kind. I was completely engrossed from the very first pages. It's narrated by Dr. Peter Cleave, the superintendent of a maximum-security mental institution in the English countryside, retelling the story of two of his patients who are hopelessly obsessed with each other. Dr. Cleave narrates as if he is presenting a case study and so describes his observations and treatment techniques, which I found most interesting. The ending has some twists and is a tad predictable but is good and tense nonetheless.

(opening lines)
The catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession has been a professional interest of mine for many years now. Such relationships vary widely in duration and intensity but tend to pass through the same stages. Recognition. Identification. Assignation. Structure. Complication. And so on. Stella Raphael's story is one of the saddest I know. A deeply frustrated woman, she suffered the predictable consequences of a long denial collapsing in the face of sudden overwhelming temptation. And she was a romantic. She translated her experience with Edgar Stark into the stuff of melodrama, she made of it a tale of outcast lovers braving the world's contempt for the sake of a great passion. Four lives were destroyed in the process, but whatever remorse she may have felt she clung to her illusions to the end. I tried to help but she deflected me from the truth until it was too late. She had to. She couldn't afford to let me see it clearly, it would have been the ruin of the few flimsy psychic structures she had left. 

Another enjoyably dark and brooding read for this time of year.

RIP challenge #5 - check!