Items related to The Quickening Maze
Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, The Quickening Maze centres on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare. After years struggling with alcohol, critical neglect and depression, Clare finds himself in High Beach Private Asylum - an institution run on reformist principles which would later become known as occupational therapy. At the same time another poet, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life and catastrophic schemes of the asylum's owner, the peculiar, charismatic Dr Matthew Allen.
For John Clare, a man who had grown up steeped in the freedoms and exhilarations of nature, who thought 'the edge of the world was a day's walk away', a locked door is a kind of death. This intensely lyrical novel describes his vertiginous fall, through hallucinatory episodes of insanity and dissolving identity, towards his final madness.
Historically accurate, but brilliantly imagined, the closed world of High Beach and its various inmates - the doctor, his lonely daughter in love with Tennyson, the brutish staff and John Clare himself - are brought vividly to life. Outside the walls is Nature, and Clare's paradise: the birds and animals, the gypsies living in the forest; his dream of home, of redemption, of escape. Rapturous yet precise, exquisitely written, rich in character and detail, this is a remarkable and deeply affecting book: a visionary novel which contains a world.
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Review:
'The world he evokes...is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means'
Book Description:
`Fould's exceptional novel is like a lucid dream... the word-perfect fruit of a poet's sharp eye and novelist's limber reach.'
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- PublisherJonathan Cape
- Publication date2009
- ISBN 10 0224087460
- ISBN 13 9780224087469
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages259
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Book Description Harback. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition. Fine first printing in original dustwrapper. As new and unread copy. Signed by the author to the title page, without inscription. First issue dustwrapper with publisher's price sticker to front panel and no reference to the Man Booker.shortlisting. As an enthusiastic collector myself I make every effort to provide a high level of service. Enquiries welcomed. Paypal accepted. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 006937
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