The Asylum: A NovelJohn Harwood
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2013
ISBN: 978-0544003477
A brilliant new Gothic thriller from the acclaimed author of The Ghost Writer and The Seance
Georgina Ferrars awakens after an apparent seizure, in an asylum known as Tregannon House, in Cornwall, with no memory of how she got there. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her she was admitted under the name of Lucy Ashton. Georgina asks the doctor to contact her uncle to verify her identity but the uncle telegrams back that his niece is at home with him in London.
Georgina finds herself in the custody of a creepy, chillingly cold doctor, who says she's deluded about her identity. He's got evidence she's not who she thinks she is, and unfortunately she can't remember how she got to his asylum. Georgina is plunged into a web of old family secrets and relationships while she frantically tries to prove who she is. Questions of identity and sanity arise constantly in the story.
Letters written some twenty years before to Georgina's mother, Emily, from a cousin involved in a secret romance, are revealed to both the reader and Geogina herself, giving clues to the mystery. Georgina's journal reveals her actions before she found herself in the asylum, and offer another piece of the puzzle. And the book returns to Georgina's narration for the ending, where all is wrapped up nicely.
John Harwood has breathed new life into the Victorian Gothic novel. Almost every trope of the genre is deployed and the result is a rich novel that will keep readers hooked until the final page. The Asylum is a creepy, unpredictable winner of a novel that faithfully keeps the Gothic horror genre alive!
JOHN HARWOOD is the author of The Ghost Writer and The Seance. He is the recipient of the International Horror Guild's First Novel Award and the Aurealis Award. He lives in Hobart, Tasmania.
ISBN: 978-0544003477; ISBN10: 0544003470; Imprint: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; On Sale: 5/21/2013; Format: Hardcover; Pages: 272; $25.00
