A Cruel Madness

by Colin Thubron

The encounter, after a ten-year separation, of middle-aged schoolmaster Daniel Pashter and Sophia, the only woman he has ever loved, in a mental institution may be taking place only in Daniel's imaginings

Genres: Fiction, Psychology

Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing about madness pretty much gives you free rein to do whatever you please when it comes to character building and plot. After all, if everyone is mad, it's not supposed to be predictable is it? Like a kid at a wordy food fight you can throw in dollops of philosophy, spoonfuls of random and rambunctious adjectives, buckets of navel gazing monologues and pained soliloquies and the odd swear word. And Colin Thubron did all of this, but still the book managed to present itself as a little too tidy and a little too predictable. Perhaps I've read too many books about crazy people, or perhaps the charm is in the predictability where there should've been none and I just missed that trick.

Thubron is better known for his epic travelogues including Mirror to Damascus (his first book), Shadows of the Silk Road, Istanbul and Siberia and I've read a number of these. I actually have to admit that I didn't know he'd written any works of fiction which either proves that they are few and far between or I'm not such a well informed reader. Possibly a little from column A and a little from Column B in this case.

However despite the predictability, this book kept me reading. Out of enjoyment? Maybe, but I suspect on the whole I just wanted to get to the last two chapters to see if what I had already guessed was in fact the case. And it was.

A diverting way to spend an snowy afternoon but not a keeper.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't believe I've ever read anything else by Thubron, or even heard of him before. So this book was like a bolt from the blue. Well, not totally because I read it right after my wife did and she has this knack for picking out absolutely fascinating books by writers neither of us have heard of before.

This novel introduces us to Daniel, who looks back on a love affair with a doctor named Sophia, while he was an English and PT teacher at a boarding school. Now, he spends time at a facility for the mentally ill, conducting essay contests to help the inmates express themselves. One day, he discovers his lost love, Sophia, in the asylum garden, an inmate. Various strands of reality, fantasy and fear interweave as we come to grips with the reality of Daniel's situation.

Definitely one of the most memorable and effective novels I've read this year, 'A Cruel Madness' is a clever but empathetic portrayal of a mind in turmoil.

[Joel Cuthbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colin Thubron is one of my favourite lesser known writers. I have been slowly wandering through his handful of novels, though he is more predominately known as a travel writer. His powerful use of description and detail evokes place and character with grace and skill. This book swept me up in the first half with it's powerful description of infatuated love and allure and mystery of the mental asylum. Ultimately what may be Thubron's weakness is that he is more of a descriptive writer than a narrative writer and there are a few plot developments later in the novel that I felt cheapened the impact and the enchantment with which it began. Some of his other novels have left more ambiguity and therefore relies more on the lingering power of the images he evokes and less on the impact of the plot. Ultimately I was a bit disappointed with this work, but will continue to seek his other books out.

[Jo Birkett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Madness from the inside, baffling though sympathetically drawn, you don't know at all what is real and what imagined.

[Angela Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by that wonderful bookshop just off the King's Road in London, John Sandoe: http://www.johnsandoe.com/. I don't think I'd have found it otherwise. But, at the time, I was writing Speaking of Love http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33... and I wanted to find out what other writers had written on the subject (and at the same time I dreaded discovering how much better other writers had fared with their novels in case I despaired ... ). But as I read A Cruel Madness I realised that even when a novel's subject matter is the same as one you are preparing, it can only inspire - if it as good as this one - because, inevitably, writers are as different from each other as each human being is different and so, equally inevitably, the way we treat a subject will be unique. As the Time Out review on the back of my copy says: 'If Van Gogh or Munch had been novelists, or Strindberg a painter, they would have created similar mental landscapes ... a work of fiction whose hold on the intellect is as strong as its grip on the senses.'

[Davidg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel, an unhappy teacher at some minor private school, whilst encouraging patients at a psychiatric hospital to write, sees a former girlfriend in the grounds. Is she there in her role as a doctor or is she now a patient? This short novel takes us closer and further away from answering this question.

A reread after many years, I found this novel even stranger than I remembered, but just as good. A short but disturbing read.

[Anne Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read, superb blurring of the edges of reality, and some of the best description of obsession I've read. Don't really agree with the One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest comparison, other than the subject matter - thought this was more about the individual and what's going on in his head than the environment (although it plays an obvious part...).

[Heather Clitheroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange little book. The plot feels a bit duplicitous and unreliable, though that's more a function of the story than not. What makes this worth reading is the use of language - the descriptions and the long, winding passages. The description of a dissociative state is particularly good (and rather terrifying).

[Rafaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had high expectations for this one, but they weren't exactly matched because the story was completely different from what I'd thought it'd be. Still, it was a great read, that got me thinking a lot about whether or not we don't all have some creepling mania, maybe even madness, within us, but are just better at containing it. I definitely recommend it!