just remembered Adam Foulds

My "books I have read" list skipped over "The Quickening Maze" without any comment about it. It is a novel based on real events, concerning the patients and some staff at the High Beach Private Asylum in Epping Forest, on the edge of London. Set in 1840,the chief characters are the asylum's doctor Matthew Allen and his patient, nature poet John Clare. The Asylum is run on reformist, modern principles with the family living freely with the inmates, who are treated humanely rather than as if they were criminals, as was once the norm. Without giving too much away, I really enjoyed the brilliant characters portrayed here, fully realised and very flawed. Some are portrayed in one light and then as the story progresses, they are revealed to be completely different from first impressions. The book is not sentimental or politically correct about the really dreadful mental illness suffered by some of the inmates, and is therefore quite confronting.

I hope to finish Jasper Fforde tonight or tomorrow, and then will race through "Grave Secrets" which at last! came in for me today. Then on to Joanna Trollope which has 17 reserves on it and is due back on February 24. So a few days of intense reading ahead. Lovely.