For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, New Hampshire College Prep is more than a summer program—it’s a lifeline. An outcast at his high school, Dan is excited to finally make some friends in his last summer before college. But when he arrives at the program, Dan learns that his dorm for the summer used to be a sanatorium, more commonly known as an asylum. And not just any asylum—a last resort for the criminally insane.
As Dan and his new friends, Abby and Jordan, explore the hidden recesses of their creepy summer home, they soon discover it’s no coincidence that the three of them ended up here. Because the asylum holds the key to a terrifying past. And there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Featuring found photos of unsettling history and real abandoned asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Madeleine Roux’s teen debut, Asylum, is a horror story that treads the line between genius and insanity.
Okay, this is going to sound infinitely weird, but I am absolutely fascinated by the history of the asylum and the treatment of the mentally ill in times of less scientific advancement. It is a extremely deep pool of knowledge and history that has hardly been tapped in the fictional world. Why? Most likely because it has a sordid past in America and in Europe and it makes our ancestors look extremely inhumane. However, I firmly believe that the stigma needs to be removed and the past explored in this area.
Anyway, when I was watching Epic Reads’ Tea Time and they were discussing this novel, I knew that it was a book I had to get my hands on. Now, the synopsis explicitly compares this novel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (which I did enjoy), but I really think the only similarity between the two is that they utilize photography during the narrative to help provide pictures of some descriptions to the reader. Which, I admit, can be a very powerful tool.
Things that worked: the fictional asylum world and the descriptions of the abandoned parts of the hospital were exquisite. It could be that I’ve done an exorbitant amount of research on the subject in the past, but I could really feel myself in the Operating Arena, the Warden’s office, and some of the solitary confinement rooms described throughout the narrative. I also enjoyed Roux’s inclusion of some of the more horrifying surgical treatments that were administered during the mid-20th century asylum/sanitarium system: particularly the focal sepsis thought of removing kidneys, parts of intestines, etc. Oh, did I mention there’s a character who underwent a lobotomy?
Things that did not work: Short chapters. While sometimes this can add something to the plot stylistically, the beginning of the novel is full of short chapters (some even only the length of a paragraph) and it was not conducive to the overall narrative. The plot was somewhat easy to figure out from the start, and I kept reading just to make sure I was right (I was). The character relationships take off a little quickly and then rocket up and down like a roller coaster despite the lack of development between them. In addition, some of the photography was not from actual insane asylums or of patients, but from stock photos. (It is possible that I have some unrealistic expectations concerning the rights from historical archives, but it would have been pretty amazing to see some actual photos.)
Overall, I think that this novel is something that will appeal to readers within a certain niche. It isn’t a very well developed mystery, but the setting and descriptions are worth reading.
3 Bards.
Moving! 