FOULDS, ADAM — The Quickening Maze

UK, Jonathan Cape. 2009. Hardcover with dust jacket, 22.5cm. Book, The Quickening Maze by Foulds is under 500g to post & 257pp. After a lifetime's struggle with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, in 1840 the nature poet John Clare is incarcerated. The asylum, in London's Epping Forest, is run on the reformist principles of occupational therapy. At the same time, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and became entangled in the life of the asylum. This historically accurate, intensely lyrical novel, describes the asylum's closed world and Nature's paradise outside the walls: Clare's dream of home, of redemption, of escape. review>>> "A seamless blend of historical fact and fiction..Foulds's writing has a poetic intensity and his descriptions of the autumnal woods around the asylum are as piercingly keen as his insight into the minds of the patients, the doctor and his family" (Daily Mail) , Very Good/Very Good.