THE QUICKENING MAZE

Graeme Malcolm delivers Adam Foulds’s debut historical novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in a melodious voice that respects the poetic rhythm of Foulds’s language. The novel’s challenges require Malcolm to employ all of his narrative skills: The complex story imagines the lives of three men whose lives converge at High Beach mental institution, outside London, in 1837. Dr. Matthew Allen, distracted head of the asylum; John Clare, mad poet; and Alfred Tennyson, who is in the area to be near his melancholic brother, are the characters in a series of episodes that never quite achieve narrative flow. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2010]