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Memoirs From the Asylum
What is it like to work inside a state hospital or to be a patient in such a hospital? What is it like to live inside the mind of such a patient? This tragi-comedic novel takes the reader inside the asylum, inside the worlds of three central characters: a narrator who has taken refuge from his fears of the world, a psychiatrist whose own life has been damaged by his father’s depression, and a catatonic schizophrenic whose world is trapped inside a crack in the wall opposite her bed. This is the interwoven story of their lives, a story that includes love, sexuality, violence, deaths, celebrations, circuses, and surprising twists. As the plot unwinds, the reader learns a great deal about the nature of futility, frustration, and freedom.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
196 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
June 1, 2010
Many books take on the subject of mental illness, many more are set in psychiatric wards, but usually these are narratives that recount a single story or perspective. What distinguishes Memoirs from the Asylum is the fact that the reader is introduced not only to individuals in a mental institution but the larger community of the institutionalized lifestyle. Ken Weene introduces his reader to numerous, dynamically-drawn characters that absolutely come alive on the page, not only through their private battles but how these patients interact and perceive the institution they’ve been relegated to. This is a powerful portrayal of what life is in an institutionalized setting and how corruption can and does exist for some residents. He brings up real problems that are often not discussed, and humanizes his characters in a way that few authors have been able to. I hope this book gets the attention it deserves because it is truly an eye-opening tale(s) that demands a reader’s attention and empathy for those who are often shunned or ignored by society. Read it.
June 26, 2012
Several streams of narrative flow together in this panoptic examination of life, death, and all the madness in between.
I must admit that I didn’t have very high expectations going into this. Like most books by unfamiliar authors, I could only hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Luckily for this cynic, however, Memoirs from the Asylum turned out to be well worth the time spent reading it.
The title seems purposefully ironic. Merriam-Webster defines “asylum” as “an inviolable place of refuge and protection,” but could such a place actually exist? With 58 chapters divided between a mental institution and the equally mad world beyond its walls, this book would seem to answer “no.” In the narrator’s repeated references to his raging uncle’s depiction of a foundering ship, forever unfinished upon its easel, the overall message seems to be that “there is no asylum, no sanctuary, only the endless gray of the tossing seas of the endless paintings of our endurance.”
Paradoxically, the only asylum to be found anywhere is within the patients themselves, even as they become prisoners to their own tormented thoughts. Regardless of their individual limitations and psychoses, they can each take solace in whatever measure of freedom still exists in their heads – provided it hasn’t been completely cut, shocked, or drugged out of them already.
Marilyn for instance, the resident catatonic, hasn’t moved a muscle in years. Instead, “she sits inert in her room. She stares at the crack in the wall opposite her bed. She stares at nothing, and she sees the world.” It is a world inhabited by her childhood sweetheart, her dead mother and brother, and their beloved family dog, taking turns in each others’ roles while perpetually morphing into penises, balls of excrement, and various other objects across a range of fantastical scenarios.
The scatological motif is fitting, given how the patients are typically treated – like crap. One callous orderly “look[ed] more like he should [have been] working in a steel mill or chopping down trees,” the narrator tells us. “but there are no mills, mines, or forests, not around here. We’re the industry, the factory: human waste management at its most medical.”
If they’re not written off or forgotten altogether, the patients are routinely abused by those in position to do so. This is what inevitably happens wherever power is exercised over those with few, if any, rights as human beings. With the exception of one empathetic doctor and a handful of workers, most of the staff seem more interested in pushing pills and preparing budget reports than providing any kind of real care.
Mind you, the patients aren’t the only loons in this bin. Everyone else gets to go home at the end of the day, but given the pathological nature of the world outside, it comes as no surprise that they all have certain “issues” of their own. Everyone is crazy, but everyone knows this deep down. The world itself is an insane asylum, but once again, there is no point in telling this to those of us forced to live in it. Weene is adept at showing this, though, and he does so with a panache that would make the narrator’s departed cousin, Stan, whoop for the sheer joy of it.
The book comes to a rather predictable conclusion, but that’s probably just because there’s no other conclusion to be drawn. Upon his release, it doesn’t take our narrator long to rediscover all of the awful, maddening things that led him to commit himself in the first place. What keeps him going is “the possibility of something better, of something however fragile rising from momentary glory, from a lavender and apricot moment of joy.” The book isn’t quite as flowery as all that, or even as dismal as the image of the foundering ship mentioned earlier. It’s a lot of different, contrary things, but what else should we expect from a book about insanity?
***Originally reviewed for Big Al's Books And Pals, 6/26/2012***
http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2012...
I must admit that I didn’t have very high expectations going into this. Like most books by unfamiliar authors, I could only hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Luckily for this cynic, however, Memoirs from the Asylum turned out to be well worth the time spent reading it.
The title seems purposefully ironic. Merriam-Webster defines “asylum” as “an inviolable place of refuge and protection,” but could such a place actually exist? With 58 chapters divided between a mental institution and the equally mad world beyond its walls, this book would seem to answer “no.” In the narrator’s repeated references to his raging uncle’s depiction of a foundering ship, forever unfinished upon its easel, the overall message seems to be that “there is no asylum, no sanctuary, only the endless gray of the tossing seas of the endless paintings of our endurance.”
Paradoxically, the only asylum to be found anywhere is within the patients themselves, even as they become prisoners to their own tormented thoughts. Regardless of their individual limitations and psychoses, they can each take solace in whatever measure of freedom still exists in their heads – provided it hasn’t been completely cut, shocked, or drugged out of them already.
Marilyn for instance, the resident catatonic, hasn’t moved a muscle in years. Instead, “she sits inert in her room. She stares at the crack in the wall opposite her bed. She stares at nothing, and she sees the world.” It is a world inhabited by her childhood sweetheart, her dead mother and brother, and their beloved family dog, taking turns in each others’ roles while perpetually morphing into penises, balls of excrement, and various other objects across a range of fantastical scenarios.
The scatological motif is fitting, given how the patients are typically treated – like crap. One callous orderly “look[ed] more like he should [have been] working in a steel mill or chopping down trees,” the narrator tells us. “but there are no mills, mines, or forests, not around here. We’re the industry, the factory: human waste management at its most medical.”
If they’re not written off or forgotten altogether, the patients are routinely abused by those in position to do so. This is what inevitably happens wherever power is exercised over those with few, if any, rights as human beings. With the exception of one empathetic doctor and a handful of workers, most of the staff seem more interested in pushing pills and preparing budget reports than providing any kind of real care.
Mind you, the patients aren’t the only loons in this bin. Everyone else gets to go home at the end of the day, but given the pathological nature of the world outside, it comes as no surprise that they all have certain “issues” of their own. Everyone is crazy, but everyone knows this deep down. The world itself is an insane asylum, but once again, there is no point in telling this to those of us forced to live in it. Weene is adept at showing this, though, and he does so with a panache that would make the narrator’s departed cousin, Stan, whoop for the sheer joy of it.
The book comes to a rather predictable conclusion, but that’s probably just because there’s no other conclusion to be drawn. Upon his release, it doesn’t take our narrator long to rediscover all of the awful, maddening things that led him to commit himself in the first place. What keeps him going is “the possibility of something better, of something however fragile rising from momentary glory, from a lavender and apricot moment of joy.” The book isn’t quite as flowery as all that, or even as dismal as the image of the foundering ship mentioned earlier. It’s a lot of different, contrary things, but what else should we expect from a book about insanity?
***Originally reviewed for Big Al's Books And Pals, 6/26/2012***
http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2012...
May 7, 2019
A beautiful book, in it's own way. It brought back memories of my own days volunteering in a mental hospital just after college. Indeed, that is a reality that is unlike any other, and Weene captures it perfectly in this beautiful novel.
January 19, 2013
Memoirs from the Asylum takes its readers to a unique world as it helps them understand the thoughts and feelings of the people who reside there. Its setting isn't a strange country or a fictional land, but a building that could be a short distance from any of our homes. The behavior of the characters is shocking, but the shock makes sense in the strange logic of their world, a logic that stems from fear, resentment, and a need to find some control over lives that have wandered far from the path of normalcy. Ken Weene’s novel shows the worst of people who have been labeled insane while revealing their basic humanity. It’s a powerful book.
The book is a novel structured like a memoir. The story begins in first person as told by one of the patients in the asylum then it switches to third person to tell about other patients as well as doctors. Yet the events still seem to be filtered through the perspective of the main narrator. This technique blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy in a way that leaves the reader with an excellent picture of a mental patient's world. Marilyn, a catatonic patient, is living her life in a fantasy world she's found within a crack in the sheetrock on her bedroom wall. Further on in the book another character, a doctor, appears to see the world Marilyn has created.
The pages of Memoirs from the Asylum are filled with strange, but intriguing characters. There's a patient named Allan who is content to spend his time staring at catatonic Marilyn. There's an air-guitarist who carries an empty guitar case everywhere he goes and another patient whose act of violence with a chair kills one of the doctors. And there are the fantasy characters such as Eric, the younger brother of Marilyn who somehow transforms into a dog and Timmy Wang, who exits Marilyn's story but leaves a body part behind.
The language in Weene's book can be outrageous at times, but it can also switch at any moment to elegant, beautiful descriptions. Here, for example, is one way Ken Weene describes life in the asylum.
If jazz is the music of life, how can we describe the music of the asylum? Discordant, raucous, lacking in form, it is the music of a creeping, groaning machine. The sound does not uplift, nor does it invite introspection. Its emotions are anxiety and loss. It is not sad, because it does not care. Wheels squeal in resistance to one another, off-key notes of electric energy fill the air like errant bolts of lightning from a demented god. Bangs and crashes of doors and tempers provide erratic tympani. One cannot dance in the asylum. However much one may whirl about the dayroom, it is not dancing. Dancing requires freedom. Music, real music, requires freedom.
Steve Lindahl – Author of Motherless Soul
The book is a novel structured like a memoir. The story begins in first person as told by one of the patients in the asylum then it switches to third person to tell about other patients as well as doctors. Yet the events still seem to be filtered through the perspective of the main narrator. This technique blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy in a way that leaves the reader with an excellent picture of a mental patient's world. Marilyn, a catatonic patient, is living her life in a fantasy world she's found within a crack in the sheetrock on her bedroom wall. Further on in the book another character, a doctor, appears to see the world Marilyn has created.
The pages of Memoirs from the Asylum are filled with strange, but intriguing characters. There's a patient named Allan who is content to spend his time staring at catatonic Marilyn. There's an air-guitarist who carries an empty guitar case everywhere he goes and another patient whose act of violence with a chair kills one of the doctors. And there are the fantasy characters such as Eric, the younger brother of Marilyn who somehow transforms into a dog and Timmy Wang, who exits Marilyn's story but leaves a body part behind.
The language in Weene's book can be outrageous at times, but it can also switch at any moment to elegant, beautiful descriptions. Here, for example, is one way Ken Weene describes life in the asylum.
If jazz is the music of life, how can we describe the music of the asylum? Discordant, raucous, lacking in form, it is the music of a creeping, groaning machine. The sound does not uplift, nor does it invite introspection. Its emotions are anxiety and loss. It is not sad, because it does not care. Wheels squeal in resistance to one another, off-key notes of electric energy fill the air like errant bolts of lightning from a demented god. Bangs and crashes of doors and tempers provide erratic tympani. One cannot dance in the asylum. However much one may whirl about the dayroom, it is not dancing. Dancing requires freedom. Music, real music, requires freedom.
Steve Lindahl – Author of Motherless Soul
October 18, 2010
Memoirs From the Asylum – Review by Martha A. Cheves, Author of Stir, Laugh, Repeat
‘I was scared of trying things that I couldn’t do. I’m one of those people who rehearses for getting up in the morning. I go through the sequence: what I’m going to wear, which tasks I’m going to complete, even what I’m going to think about. If something seems too difficult, screw it. If there’s a bunch of too difficult things on the roster, well, screw the whole day; I stay in my bed – my safe, unchallenging bed With my face turned to the wall and my knees hugged securely to my breast, I journey inward – to the safety of my within.’
‘Safety is a relative thing. In the bigger picture, my life went from bad to worse. But, I wasn’t in ‘Nam. I wasn’t failing at a job. I wasn’t getting into trouble with people. I was simply being schizophrenic. Disabilitied, Social Securitied, and indulged by parents hiding their loathing and frustration. Being schizophrenic isn’t so bad – at least not until they, the great unspecified they that is society, say screw it, screw you, and lock you away in the warehouse of unloving dementia.’
Have you ever wondered what goes through the minds of those diagnosed with being “manic depressives”, “obsessive-compulsives”, “schizophrenics” or any other mental disorder that would require them to be placed into an asylum? Actually, I’ve never given it much thought until I started reading Memoirs From the Asylum. I’m sure that’s probably the case with most of us unless we have had to deal first hand with someone in one of these mental incapacities.
The more I read of Memoirs From the Asylum, the more I understood how these people deal with their fears of life. How they are able to withdraw into themselves. Making a safe haven that allows admittance only to those that they invite.
After entering their own personal world, is there ever the possibility of coming back? Maybe partially? And if they do come back into the real world, can the cope with a normal life? Do they really want to? Reading Memoirs From the Asylum gave me the answers to these questions, but then it didn’t, making this one thought binding book. Kenneth Weene has so much insight into the minds of these people, leaving me with a feeling of "wish" and "dread".... Wishing I could sometimes slip into my own little world that would allow me to forget all of my problems but Dread because to go there requires you to relinquish control of so many things we are accustomed to. This was one very intense book that I have to admit that I found quite interesting and quite enjoyable.
2010
All Things That Matter Press
189 Pages
ISBN# 978-0-9844219-5-4
Review Stir, Laugh, Repeat at Amazon.com Stir, Laugh, Repeat
‘I was scared of trying things that I couldn’t do. I’m one of those people who rehearses for getting up in the morning. I go through the sequence: what I’m going to wear, which tasks I’m going to complete, even what I’m going to think about. If something seems too difficult, screw it. If there’s a bunch of too difficult things on the roster, well, screw the whole day; I stay in my bed – my safe, unchallenging bed With my face turned to the wall and my knees hugged securely to my breast, I journey inward – to the safety of my within.’
‘Safety is a relative thing. In the bigger picture, my life went from bad to worse. But, I wasn’t in ‘Nam. I wasn’t failing at a job. I wasn’t getting into trouble with people. I was simply being schizophrenic. Disabilitied, Social Securitied, and indulged by parents hiding their loathing and frustration. Being schizophrenic isn’t so bad – at least not until they, the great unspecified they that is society, say screw it, screw you, and lock you away in the warehouse of unloving dementia.’
Have you ever wondered what goes through the minds of those diagnosed with being “manic depressives”, “obsessive-compulsives”, “schizophrenics” or any other mental disorder that would require them to be placed into an asylum? Actually, I’ve never given it much thought until I started reading Memoirs From the Asylum. I’m sure that’s probably the case with most of us unless we have had to deal first hand with someone in one of these mental incapacities.
The more I read of Memoirs From the Asylum, the more I understood how these people deal with their fears of life. How they are able to withdraw into themselves. Making a safe haven that allows admittance only to those that they invite.
After entering their own personal world, is there ever the possibility of coming back? Maybe partially? And if they do come back into the real world, can the cope with a normal life? Do they really want to? Reading Memoirs From the Asylum gave me the answers to these questions, but then it didn’t, making this one thought binding book. Kenneth Weene has so much insight into the minds of these people, leaving me with a feeling of "wish" and "dread".... Wishing I could sometimes slip into my own little world that would allow me to forget all of my problems but Dread because to go there requires you to relinquish control of so many things we are accustomed to. This was one very intense book that I have to admit that I found quite interesting and quite enjoyable.
2010
All Things That Matter Press
189 Pages
ISBN# 978-0-9844219-5-4
Review Stir, Laugh, Repeat at Amazon.com Stir, Laugh, Repeat
June 29, 2010
In “Memoirs from the Asylum” Kenneth Weene allows the reader to enter a world most of us pray we never have to…the world of mental illness and the effects it has on both the victims and those that are paid to help them.
There’s Marilyn, the catatonic schizophrenic, who spends all of her time seeing an altogether different world through a crack in her bedroom wall. It’s the world she once related to and is populated by those of her past who meant something to her. How will she respond when the crack gets repaired?
Dr. Buford Abrose is the first year resident who also has seen his share of problems. From a loveless marriage to the feelings of failure on his part when he can’t balance the paperwork aspect of the job from the actual attempt to make a difference, he is caught within the walls of the asylum. The closer he tries to understand the patients, the farther he falls from his own life.
The unfeeling workers of the asylum add to the misery and complications these, and the other characters, of the book experience. Their answers normally include medications and isolation for the patients…or is it for themselves?
There is a feeling of connection between these characters that becomes apparent as the book goes on. Although they all react in their own way, the connection that they share is that of fear. Fears that were brought on by the “real world” when they were younger…probably none of their own doing. Possibly a death of someone close, maybe the physical abuse of a parent or friend…something made these people afraid and wanting to escape. Now that they did, all they really want is freedom, whatever that means to them.
In the unique style of narration, Weene allows us to see what really happens in the minds of those that are institutionalized. Sometimes the book was hard to read, using words and imagery that the normal person may not understand or relate to and was lacking an actual plot, but somehow at the end it all comes together.
Not one to be a spoiler, all I can say is that “Memoirs from the Asylum” is a book that everyone should read and at the same time pray to the God of your choice that the freedom you have is the freedom that you really want.
There’s Marilyn, the catatonic schizophrenic, who spends all of her time seeing an altogether different world through a crack in her bedroom wall. It’s the world she once related to and is populated by those of her past who meant something to her. How will she respond when the crack gets repaired?
Dr. Buford Abrose is the first year resident who also has seen his share of problems. From a loveless marriage to the feelings of failure on his part when he can’t balance the paperwork aspect of the job from the actual attempt to make a difference, he is caught within the walls of the asylum. The closer he tries to understand the patients, the farther he falls from his own life.
The unfeeling workers of the asylum add to the misery and complications these, and the other characters, of the book experience. Their answers normally include medications and isolation for the patients…or is it for themselves?
There is a feeling of connection between these characters that becomes apparent as the book goes on. Although they all react in their own way, the connection that they share is that of fear. Fears that were brought on by the “real world” when they were younger…probably none of their own doing. Possibly a death of someone close, maybe the physical abuse of a parent or friend…something made these people afraid and wanting to escape. Now that they did, all they really want is freedom, whatever that means to them.
In the unique style of narration, Weene allows us to see what really happens in the minds of those that are institutionalized. Sometimes the book was hard to read, using words and imagery that the normal person may not understand or relate to and was lacking an actual plot, but somehow at the end it all comes together.
Not one to be a spoiler, all I can say is that “Memoirs from the Asylum” is a book that everyone should read and at the same time pray to the God of your choice that the freedom you have is the freedom that you really want.
June 27, 2013
"Memoirs From he Asylum" by Kenneth Weene is an important and well composed piece of work about mental asylums. Snippets with perspectives on nurses and inmates alike highlight many rather important points and messages that people should really know more about.
Society's view on madness, on the term asylum or sanctuary, the helplessness of the patients, the overwhelming challenge of the nurses and doctors to name but a few.
Weene does a great job at portraying some false perceptions and errors in the way the system works.
I am giving this four stars because I felt that in light of the many well justified criticisms there could have been more emphasis of possible improvements and a slightly more benevolent approach when talking about care staff. Maybe because I know one very good mental health nurse and have seen him in action I might be too personally guided and sensitive in this judgement.
Society's view on madness, on the term asylum or sanctuary, the helplessness of the patients, the overwhelming challenge of the nurses and doctors to name but a few.
Weene does a great job at portraying some false perceptions and errors in the way the system works.
I am giving this four stars because I felt that in light of the many well justified criticisms there could have been more emphasis of possible improvements and a slightly more benevolent approach when talking about care staff. Maybe because I know one very good mental health nurse and have seen him in action I might be too personally guided and sensitive in this judgement.
September 3, 2013
EMOTIONAL AND TERRIFYING
I have read Kenneth Weene's intriguing book, Memoirs from the Asylum, some time ago. Not only was this a fascinating read, the writing was incredibly good. Mr. Weene's points of view were of both patients and staff in a mental hospital. They display such insight you feel like you are completely in their minds, which at times is a terrifying place to be. What an uncomfortable feeling to hear the thoughts of the patients through the conversations playing out in their heads, and the how they act out their frustrations to such thoughts. Very often we hear in the minds of the staff, self-serving snippets, generally found in the ones who hold the power. This book takes you on a journey through the modern day version of an insane asylum and I wonder how much progress we have made. It seems like there are no happy endings in the real lives of these patients. Thank you, Kenneth Weene, for bringing it to our attention. Mary Firmin, author of Deadly Pleasures
August 31, 2012
Kenneth Weene relates aspects of life in a state hospital through the eyes of a patient stranded there partially through his own apathy. We also meet a resident who, in attempting to make a difference in the lives of his patients, becomes drawn into the drabness of routine existence. Staff and patients are memorably and disturbingly portrayed in this fiction drawn from reality.
August 14, 2010
As I'm the author, I guess I should tell people that this is a powerful read but they have to learn that for themselves.
August 30, 2021
Can Anyone Escape the Madhouse?
In reading Kenneth Weene’s excellent Memoirs from the Asylum, I was reminded of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Both present a psychiatric hospital at its near-worst. Kesey’s cruel Nurse Ratched has been replaced by multiple lesser figures with the same goal: obedience to authority and the efficient operation of the institution. To take just one of these officials, “Rules and forms have become Orrin Partles’ life, his obsession. If that obsession has left a hollow place where a soul ought to be, that is fine with him.” True, “there are some staff who make our world a better place” and do more than simply push pills. However, “Their reward is minimal: an extra thank you, a smile, a friendly nickname.” Also, they are given only brief recognition in the novel. The basic point remains the same. The Asylum is an unhappy place, a place we do not want to be.
As the title suggests, there are multiple characters with multiple stories in this novel. The ones that stand out to me the most are Dr. Buford Ambrose, a first year resident in psychiatry, and Marilyn, a catatonic schizophrenic who does not respond to him in the slightest, though internally she despises him and wishes he were gone. The author is extremely skillful in presenting what her distorted, sexually twisted consciousness is like. It is a consciousness that some readers will probably find difficult to understand. Marilyn lives only in what she imagines she sees and hears through a small crack in her bedroom wall. As for Ambrose, he wants to help Marilyn but is inept and unable and has no idea of how to proceed. Psychologically, he has his own issues and watches his severed hand “writing a holy message” on Marilyn’s nose. Can he possibly help Marilyn? This question kept me reading, and I was in for a surprise rich in irony.
Weene writes that “The more things change, the more the madness remains the same.” But some inmates try to make a difference. Jamul, “our air-guitar troubadour” persuades two others to escape the institution with him. And the novel’s main narrator attempts to escape as well, hitching rides toward the west coast. On the way he continues to fight his own demons, which include the death of a beloved cousin. Can he escape the asylum and forge an independent, semi-sane life of his own? Can any of us ever escape the Madhouse of life? This is perhaps the central question of Weene’s haunting and outstanding novel.
In reading Kenneth Weene’s excellent Memoirs from the Asylum, I was reminded of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Both present a psychiatric hospital at its near-worst. Kesey’s cruel Nurse Ratched has been replaced by multiple lesser figures with the same goal: obedience to authority and the efficient operation of the institution. To take just one of these officials, “Rules and forms have become Orrin Partles’ life, his obsession. If that obsession has left a hollow place where a soul ought to be, that is fine with him.” True, “there are some staff who make our world a better place” and do more than simply push pills. However, “Their reward is minimal: an extra thank you, a smile, a friendly nickname.” Also, they are given only brief recognition in the novel. The basic point remains the same. The Asylum is an unhappy place, a place we do not want to be.
As the title suggests, there are multiple characters with multiple stories in this novel. The ones that stand out to me the most are Dr. Buford Ambrose, a first year resident in psychiatry, and Marilyn, a catatonic schizophrenic who does not respond to him in the slightest, though internally she despises him and wishes he were gone. The author is extremely skillful in presenting what her distorted, sexually twisted consciousness is like. It is a consciousness that some readers will probably find difficult to understand. Marilyn lives only in what she imagines she sees and hears through a small crack in her bedroom wall. As for Ambrose, he wants to help Marilyn but is inept and unable and has no idea of how to proceed. Psychologically, he has his own issues and watches his severed hand “writing a holy message” on Marilyn’s nose. Can he possibly help Marilyn? This question kept me reading, and I was in for a surprise rich in irony.
Weene writes that “The more things change, the more the madness remains the same.” But some inmates try to make a difference. Jamul, “our air-guitar troubadour” persuades two others to escape the institution with him. And the novel’s main narrator attempts to escape as well, hitching rides toward the west coast. On the way he continues to fight his own demons, which include the death of a beloved cousin. Can he escape the asylum and forge an independent, semi-sane life of his own? Can any of us ever escape the Madhouse of life? This is perhaps the central question of Weene’s haunting and outstanding novel.
July 6, 2018
Good story. Ken spent some decades writing this and it shows a little - it's a bit episodic, and the plot is narrower than that story. The story can be hard to follow because it's from weird perspectives, and that's really the point of the enterprise. There are unreliable narrators telling unreliable narratives, hallucinations and delusions. A real attempt at empathy for folks outside consensus reality.
I think Ken and I had some similar experiences. My work at the hospital was after a lot of clean-up and regulation, and still I knew some of the same archetypes as in here. That made it a tough read: my own traumas got in the way.
If you liked Ken Kesey, I think you'll like Ken Weene, too.
I think Ken and I had some similar experiences. My work at the hospital was after a lot of clean-up and regulation, and still I knew some of the same archetypes as in here. That made it a tough read: my own traumas got in the way.
If you liked Ken Kesey, I think you'll like Ken Weene, too.
October 19, 2018
Not as good as I had hoped. Interesting insight, though.
September 5, 2010
Kenneth Weene’s Jaw Clamping, Nerve Spinning Novel-like Memoir Depicts Life Behind The Scenes in A Mental Asylum
This incredible novel is more than just a book about the insane. The characters in all their crazed out existences question what it means to be human and what happens when our greatest fears trap us from living. Set during the 1970s/1980s the book is reminiscent of the movies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl Interrupted only with a more uplifting, thought provoking edge. Like its movie predecessors this novel pits the inmates against the staff, but therein lays the excellent dichotomy that author, Kenneth Weene has developed. In Memoirs of the Asylum some of the staff members will view the mentally insane as mere furniture objects, yet others will see their own vulnerabilities and frailties mirrored within the patients.
In the view of the narrator, the inmates are controlled by whatever means necessary including, excessive medication, shock treatments and even lobotomies so that the inmates are kept out of sight from society and to do this the staff must be willing and able to lie. Yet, neither inmates nor staff fits very well in this pre-ordained script. The characters in this novel tend to be a messy, vibrant lot, a point made in all its various discussions of excrement. For in our most smelly states in the view of the narrator, we are our much authentic selves. Here in the proverbial restroom there is no escape from our basic and most primitive selves.
This sense of no escape is a central theme in this novel. The more the patients and the staff try to escape from themselves the more they find themselves at each harrowing turn. While the book presents a virtual kaleidoscope of characters losing their minds and ultimately climaxing with a symphonic roar at the full moon as patients are united in their madness which culminates in a murder. This book is anything but gratuitous in its depiction of violence or madness. Each insane person is treated with the utmost care and humanity and in so doing that is the genius behind Weene’s writing and the authenticity of this story.
The character we know the most is the narrator who is at once an observer, and a patient suffering from schizophrenia, but more to the heart he is a character making sense of the loss of his best friend and suffering from immense grief. He is not the only mourner in this novel. Marilyn, the catatonic patient is alternately trapped between a variety of layers of grief for her mother, a lost love and lost dog. She is the silent hero. Her catatonic state has a transformative affect on the new medical resident, Dr. Buford Ambrose. He is at once fascinated, mesmerized and disgusted with her state of non-existence, what is essentially a waking death. Yet, this notion of not quite living is symptomatic of many of the inmates and even staff members. But it is Marilyn that has the most transformative effect on the patient, Alan who finds her captivating and representative of the ideal woman, one that is pure and unmoved by the world around her. Yet, her state is anything but un-removed. She is living in the crack in her room in ways she is afraid to do in the living world. It is there that she can face her own fears, her own tormentors over and over. Even though her mini-conquests occur in her mind and in silences they have the un-gluing effect on Dr. Buford Ambrose who questions his very fiber as he feels helpless and unable to cure her and unable to save his crumbling marriage. Yet at the same time he is growing to care for her. And in his near paternal love for her, a family is formed, one with both him and Alan as her dutiful suitor. Alan is the peeping tom, the crazy philosopher and the man who masturbates at will in front of any and everyone including circus elephants. And as Marilyn seeps into a deep stupor under the heavy cloak of meds, she is both the hero to herself as she faces her demons once and for all, yet physically is the victim of a rape. It is at their collective finest hours that Alan, though he is not the father chooses to be her husband and that Marilyn breaks through the walls of her existence and says in her own words to Dr. Arbrose, “The vacation is over. “ She welcomes impending motherhood. Though the fate of her life and of Alan’s and their child is up to the asylum, the readers are left with the sense that love and acceptance while it may not cure lunacy can dampen its severe decree.
===
This book review is written by Julie Ann Weinstein author of the forthcoming short story collection, Flashes from the Other World (All Things That Matter Press, Fall 2010 http://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com.) To learn more about the authors visit their respective websites, http://www.authorkenweene.com and http://www.julieweinstein.com.
This incredible novel is more than just a book about the insane. The characters in all their crazed out existences question what it means to be human and what happens when our greatest fears trap us from living. Set during the 1970s/1980s the book is reminiscent of the movies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl Interrupted only with a more uplifting, thought provoking edge. Like its movie predecessors this novel pits the inmates against the staff, but therein lays the excellent dichotomy that author, Kenneth Weene has developed. In Memoirs of the Asylum some of the staff members will view the mentally insane as mere furniture objects, yet others will see their own vulnerabilities and frailties mirrored within the patients.
In the view of the narrator, the inmates are controlled by whatever means necessary including, excessive medication, shock treatments and even lobotomies so that the inmates are kept out of sight from society and to do this the staff must be willing and able to lie. Yet, neither inmates nor staff fits very well in this pre-ordained script. The characters in this novel tend to be a messy, vibrant lot, a point made in all its various discussions of excrement. For in our most smelly states in the view of the narrator, we are our much authentic selves. Here in the proverbial restroom there is no escape from our basic and most primitive selves.
This sense of no escape is a central theme in this novel. The more the patients and the staff try to escape from themselves the more they find themselves at each harrowing turn. While the book presents a virtual kaleidoscope of characters losing their minds and ultimately climaxing with a symphonic roar at the full moon as patients are united in their madness which culminates in a murder. This book is anything but gratuitous in its depiction of violence or madness. Each insane person is treated with the utmost care and humanity and in so doing that is the genius behind Weene’s writing and the authenticity of this story.
The character we know the most is the narrator who is at once an observer, and a patient suffering from schizophrenia, but more to the heart he is a character making sense of the loss of his best friend and suffering from immense grief. He is not the only mourner in this novel. Marilyn, the catatonic patient is alternately trapped between a variety of layers of grief for her mother, a lost love and lost dog. She is the silent hero. Her catatonic state has a transformative affect on the new medical resident, Dr. Buford Ambrose. He is at once fascinated, mesmerized and disgusted with her state of non-existence, what is essentially a waking death. Yet, this notion of not quite living is symptomatic of many of the inmates and even staff members. But it is Marilyn that has the most transformative effect on the patient, Alan who finds her captivating and representative of the ideal woman, one that is pure and unmoved by the world around her. Yet, her state is anything but un-removed. She is living in the crack in her room in ways she is afraid to do in the living world. It is there that she can face her own fears, her own tormentors over and over. Even though her mini-conquests occur in her mind and in silences they have the un-gluing effect on Dr. Buford Ambrose who questions his very fiber as he feels helpless and unable to cure her and unable to save his crumbling marriage. Yet at the same time he is growing to care for her. And in his near paternal love for her, a family is formed, one with both him and Alan as her dutiful suitor. Alan is the peeping tom, the crazy philosopher and the man who masturbates at will in front of any and everyone including circus elephants. And as Marilyn seeps into a deep stupor under the heavy cloak of meds, she is both the hero to herself as she faces her demons once and for all, yet physically is the victim of a rape. It is at their collective finest hours that Alan, though he is not the father chooses to be her husband and that Marilyn breaks through the walls of her existence and says in her own words to Dr. Arbrose, “The vacation is over. “ She welcomes impending motherhood. Though the fate of her life and of Alan’s and their child is up to the asylum, the readers are left with the sense that love and acceptance while it may not cure lunacy can dampen its severe decree.
===
This book review is written by Julie Ann Weinstein author of the forthcoming short story collection, Flashes from the Other World (All Things That Matter Press, Fall 2010 http://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com.) To learn more about the authors visit their respective websites, http://www.authorkenweene.com and http://www.julieweinstein.com.
December 1, 2010
Book Title: Memoirs from the Asylum
Author: Kenneth Weene
ISBN: 978-0-9844219-5-4
Publisher: All Things that Matter Press, 2010
Reviewer Byline: Vonnie Faroqui for WITS
Memoirs from the Asylum author Kenneth Weene has, with many twists and phobic turns, succeeded in writing a moving and fascinating exploration of the inner workings of the insane mind. Memoirs is set within the confines of a mental health institution and weaves its way through the lives and memories of the asylum’s patients, narrated from the internal perspective of two patients and their psychiatrist. The vision of life depicted within and around these 3 main characters makes a case for a larger societal madness as the author explores the bureaucracy surrounding and encapsulating the insane and their caregivers. As uncomfortable as some aspects of the book may be, these same passages hold illuminating power.
Well crafted, Memoirs from the Asylum has a developed plot line and believable story progression. The best aspect of the book is how the author has written from the perspective or inner thoughts of the characters. This is done with such realism, understanding and truth that it is easy to relate with the patient’s fears, frustrations, joys and triumphs. It is obvious that the author is writing from a deeper understanding of human motivation and psychosis. His treatment of his characters is compassionate and without judgment allowing the reader to formulate their own opinions and confront their own preconceptions and prejudices. Unlike so many other novels these days, Weene’s writing is not preachy or deliberately educational in tone, with well developed characters and originality that make for compelling reading.
At times the book is disturbing as it addresses and reveals many destructive societal attitudes and inhumanities. The author has skillfully lifted the veil of willful disinterest surrounding the mentally ill and shone a spot light on the role played by the greater culture in perpetuating and growing madness.
Full of memorable characters that are as tragic as they are comedic, this book proves itself in the great tradition of writing. Disturbingly honest and often graphic in nature Memoirs from the Asylum is an entertaining and enlightening read for adults.
Author: Kenneth Weene
ISBN: 978-0-9844219-5-4
Publisher: All Things that Matter Press, 2010
Reviewer Byline: Vonnie Faroqui for WITS
Memoirs from the Asylum author Kenneth Weene has, with many twists and phobic turns, succeeded in writing a moving and fascinating exploration of the inner workings of the insane mind. Memoirs is set within the confines of a mental health institution and weaves its way through the lives and memories of the asylum’s patients, narrated from the internal perspective of two patients and their psychiatrist. The vision of life depicted within and around these 3 main characters makes a case for a larger societal madness as the author explores the bureaucracy surrounding and encapsulating the insane and their caregivers. As uncomfortable as some aspects of the book may be, these same passages hold illuminating power.
Well crafted, Memoirs from the Asylum has a developed plot line and believable story progression. The best aspect of the book is how the author has written from the perspective or inner thoughts of the characters. This is done with such realism, understanding and truth that it is easy to relate with the patient’s fears, frustrations, joys and triumphs. It is obvious that the author is writing from a deeper understanding of human motivation and psychosis. His treatment of his characters is compassionate and without judgment allowing the reader to formulate their own opinions and confront their own preconceptions and prejudices. Unlike so many other novels these days, Weene’s writing is not preachy or deliberately educational in tone, with well developed characters and originality that make for compelling reading.
At times the book is disturbing as it addresses and reveals many destructive societal attitudes and inhumanities. The author has skillfully lifted the veil of willful disinterest surrounding the mentally ill and shone a spot light on the role played by the greater culture in perpetuating and growing madness.
Full of memorable characters that are as tragic as they are comedic, this book proves itself in the great tradition of writing. Disturbingly honest and often graphic in nature Memoirs from the Asylum is an entertaining and enlightening read for adults.
September 1, 2010
Memoirs From The Asylum by Kenneth Weene is a disturbing novel, set in an American state psychiatric institution. The story is told by three characters: a nameless narrator who is there voluntarily, Dr Ambrose, a new psychiatrist who is struggling with his own problems while trying to treat his patients and Marilyn, a catatonic schizophrenic who shields herself from reality by living in her own world. Their lives interweave throughout the story.
In a traditional novel action drives the plot. Readers expect something to happen. In this book there are a few dramatic events but most of the time not much happens. The characters wait and watch the world like caged animals – or psychiatric patients. Nevertheless, the novel is alive with their thoughts and feelings, drawing the reader into the story. The author takes readers on a fascinating journey inside the minds of patients and doctors, revealing a world that most people know little about.
This novel isn’t a gentle, feelgood book. It often jars and is uncomfortably realistic in its portrayal of life in an asylum. There are many tragic characters and some shocking events in it; the characters cope with life as best they can. Some characters have happy endings, many do not.
The diverse characters have believable voices. From the beginning of each chapter it is evident who the narrator is. The structure of the book moves the story steadily on without appearing to do so.
As readers get to know each character the climax of the novel will be almost predictable but it is no less effective for this.
This novel is very different from my usual reading choice. I found myself intrigued, shocked, saddened and, at times, heartened as I read. I became engrossed in its world. While it wasn’t easy reading, I’m glad I read it.
In a traditional novel action drives the plot. Readers expect something to happen. In this book there are a few dramatic events but most of the time not much happens. The characters wait and watch the world like caged animals – or psychiatric patients. Nevertheless, the novel is alive with their thoughts and feelings, drawing the reader into the story. The author takes readers on a fascinating journey inside the minds of patients and doctors, revealing a world that most people know little about.
This novel isn’t a gentle, feelgood book. It often jars and is uncomfortably realistic in its portrayal of life in an asylum. There are many tragic characters and some shocking events in it; the characters cope with life as best they can. Some characters have happy endings, many do not.
The diverse characters have believable voices. From the beginning of each chapter it is evident who the narrator is. The structure of the book moves the story steadily on without appearing to do so.
As readers get to know each character the climax of the novel will be almost predictable but it is no less effective for this.
This novel is very different from my usual reading choice. I found myself intrigued, shocked, saddened and, at times, heartened as I read. I became engrossed in its world. While it wasn’t easy reading, I’m glad I read it.
March 23, 2011
Like Chia Pets sprouting helplessly fake looking greenery, these images that flood out of my unconscious are covered with meanings."
This quote from the middle of this novel stuck with me as being the best assessment of the novel on a whole. Set within a mental hospital, the novel follows closely to three people within, an unnamed narrator, Marilyn the woman in a catatonic stupor and Dr. Buford Abrose a first year resident psychiatrist. The novel deals with madness that is self-created to fit in with the residents of the institution, madness brought on by abuse, madness that is state-created. Several of the patients in this novel, we come to learn, are placed within the hospital for the wrong reasons. Such as, Jamul, a young teen that was raised in the state instiutuions, abandoned by his parents, he remains at the hospital because he has no where else to go. The patients suffer abuse, neglect and state budgets.
The novel is filled with sadness, the stories are tragic and the voice of the novel keeps the reader from connecting with the patients. There is a wall between the reader and the characters, almost as if we are the cars driving by the institution and looking briefly in on the patients.
The ending leaves an air of mystery and an open interpretation for the reader. The escape we so hope the patients will find never turns out in their favor and the reader is left with regret that this world could not be fixed. Even Marilyn's awakening from her catatonic stupor leaves a bittersweet taste in the mouth of the reader. Is it better that she be awake and interacting or confined in her mind where everyone she ever cared for is there.
This book is not for everyone, many moments of the novel are graphic in nature and tragic in content throughout. It is an excellent read and if you can stomach the topic then pick up a copy and read it today!
This quote from the middle of this novel stuck with me as being the best assessment of the novel on a whole. Set within a mental hospital, the novel follows closely to three people within, an unnamed narrator, Marilyn the woman in a catatonic stupor and Dr. Buford Abrose a first year resident psychiatrist. The novel deals with madness that is self-created to fit in with the residents of the institution, madness brought on by abuse, madness that is state-created. Several of the patients in this novel, we come to learn, are placed within the hospital for the wrong reasons. Such as, Jamul, a young teen that was raised in the state instiutuions, abandoned by his parents, he remains at the hospital because he has no where else to go. The patients suffer abuse, neglect and state budgets.
The novel is filled with sadness, the stories are tragic and the voice of the novel keeps the reader from connecting with the patients. There is a wall between the reader and the characters, almost as if we are the cars driving by the institution and looking briefly in on the patients.
The ending leaves an air of mystery and an open interpretation for the reader. The escape we so hope the patients will find never turns out in their favor and the reader is left with regret that this world could not be fixed. Even Marilyn's awakening from her catatonic stupor leaves a bittersweet taste in the mouth of the reader. Is it better that she be awake and interacting or confined in her mind where everyone she ever cared for is there.
This book is not for everyone, many moments of the novel are graphic in nature and tragic in content throughout. It is an excellent read and if you can stomach the topic then pick up a copy and read it today!
October 21, 2010
On the Other Side of the Mirror, October 21, 2010
By R. Rubenstein "RJR" (looking for a place) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Memoirs From The Asylum (Paperback)
Home is where truth is found, held up to the light, no matter the darkness of the place it inhabits. Kenneth Weene's Memoirs from the Asylum is an unlikely place but that is where we don't mind staying because of the passion of the people that live there.
This is the book Ken Kesey did not write. The poetry and profundities flow from a lifetime of good and dark visions and keen intellectual insights. Memoirs is a novel I do not want to end. When it did, I felt that all familiar constant companion callede dread lurking in that lost crack somewhere on the other side of the mirror. A haunting, literary achievement where patients and providers seem to trade places with truths and day visions, Weene's Asylum is the turf for a gritty grid-iron war. We don't want to admit it is also our own constant landscape in our daily battle to land right-side-up. Told often with dark humor, perhaps too much graphic descriptions I would rather not have read, the humanity of the overall vision makes this a haunting, unforgettable work and a distinctive addition to what really goes on in the night shift of her our souls.
robert rubenstein, author
Ghost Runners
on amazon.com and ATTM Press.
By R. Rubenstein "RJR" (looking for a place) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Memoirs From The Asylum (Paperback)
Home is where truth is found, held up to the light, no matter the darkness of the place it inhabits. Kenneth Weene's Memoirs from the Asylum is an unlikely place but that is where we don't mind staying because of the passion of the people that live there.
This is the book Ken Kesey did not write. The poetry and profundities flow from a lifetime of good and dark visions and keen intellectual insights. Memoirs is a novel I do not want to end. When it did, I felt that all familiar constant companion callede dread lurking in that lost crack somewhere on the other side of the mirror. A haunting, literary achievement where patients and providers seem to trade places with truths and day visions, Weene's Asylum is the turf for a gritty grid-iron war. We don't want to admit it is also our own constant landscape in our daily battle to land right-side-up. Told often with dark humor, perhaps too much graphic descriptions I would rather not have read, the humanity of the overall vision makes this a haunting, unforgettable work and a distinctive addition to what really goes on in the night shift of her our souls.
robert rubenstein, author
Ghost Runners
on amazon.com and ATTM Press.
January 3, 2013
MEMOIRS FROM THE ASYLUM KENNETH WEENE
REVIEWED BY KAREN VAUGHAN
This book will make you chuckle, cry and scratch your head. It will make you question why the neglect and abuse in a state mental institution is prevalent and ignored. Memoirs will make you wonder why people get into the field of mental health and psychiatry only to become burned out shells happy to bring on the valium so they don’t have to deal with the emotional detritus that was once some one’s mind.
The author has painted a vibrant picture what life is like on the inside. It’s not like the patients asked for what was happening to them; life happened to them for various reasons, a break caused by the death of Marilyns mom, the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and her brothers death as well. The death of the narrators close friend and cousin caused his breakdown and commitment. There are other patients with similar stories. Then there is Doctor Buford, a first year resident who feels like a failure as he is not in a cushy private practice dealing with rich head cases so his wife can be happy.
There are laughs in this book and serious drama all pulled together to give the reader pause to think about this stuff. Kenneth Weene has pulled stories from a private practice and years of counselling others to make a great novel for our times. Kudos and five stars to the author for a brilliant tale.
REVIEWED BY KAREN VAUGHAN
This book will make you chuckle, cry and scratch your head. It will make you question why the neglect and abuse in a state mental institution is prevalent and ignored. Memoirs will make you wonder why people get into the field of mental health and psychiatry only to become burned out shells happy to bring on the valium so they don’t have to deal with the emotional detritus that was once some one’s mind.
The author has painted a vibrant picture what life is like on the inside. It’s not like the patients asked for what was happening to them; life happened to them for various reasons, a break caused by the death of Marilyns mom, the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and her brothers death as well. The death of the narrators close friend and cousin caused his breakdown and commitment. There are other patients with similar stories. Then there is Doctor Buford, a first year resident who feels like a failure as he is not in a cushy private practice dealing with rich head cases so his wife can be happy.
There are laughs in this book and serious drama all pulled together to give the reader pause to think about this stuff. Kenneth Weene has pulled stories from a private practice and years of counselling others to make a great novel for our times. Kudos and five stars to the author for a brilliant tale.
Want to read
July 21, 2010 Louis Auchincloss (1917-2010) was a gifted, prolific novelist who drew much of the material for his work from his experience as a lawyer. And we learn on the back cover of Kenneth Weene’s “Memoirs From the Asylum” that he is “a psychologist and pastoral counselor” who “has used that professional experience in this, his second novel.” More specifically, in his Author’s Note, Weene explains that many of the people “who helped shape the pages” of this brilliant novel “were at one time or another my clients. Some I met working in a state hospital; others were clinic or private clients.” But this book is not a documentary. It consists of 180-plus pages divided into 58 short chapters that vividly depict—with great imagination--the lives, fears and aspirations of the patients and staff at a mental institution. In America today, several million people suffer from a variety of serious mental disorders. Weene’s novel portrays their world, with moments of great sadness, and some of humor, but above all this is a deeply moving portrait of people, depicting them with great empathy.
--Kal Wagenheim, Author of “The Secret Life of Walter Mott.”
--Kal Wagenheim, Author of “The Secret Life of Walter Mott.”
February 10, 2014
When I started reading this book, I didn't really know what to expect. I would say this book is very interesting and detailed, but I hated it. I stopped reading halfway thought it, so I didn't finish it. I really wanted to finish it, but all the sexual abuse and molestation that was in the book really got to me. I am a sex abuse victim, and some of the parts in the book were so graphic that they really were upsetting me. I also found it weird that the author was in pastoral care, so he is some kind of Christian or religion. But in the book he writes about one of the patients talking to Christ, and some of the things were just to disturbing for me.
The sad thing is I have been in a mental hospital, when I was a teenager, and I think a lot of what he wrote could happen. I think that maybe why it bothered me so much. I need to be more careful of the books I buy, because I think as I heal more, I get more sensitive. It will be interesting to see what others said about this book.
The sad thing is I have been in a mental hospital, when I was a teenager, and I think a lot of what he wrote could happen. I think that maybe why it bothered me so much. I need to be more careful of the books I buy, because I think as I heal more, I get more sensitive. It will be interesting to see what others said about this book.
April 15, 2010
This book will be availble in May 2010 and i am anticipating it will be a 5 star book based on Mr. Weene's previous books.
Mr. Weene is an excellent writer who weaves realistic tales that remind you of the girl next door, the every day woman, family issues, religion,
relationships, and anything else that could occur in anyone's life.
His characters are so real, you think they must be real. But they come from the creative mind of Kenneth Weene. In his lifetime, he has surely "been there and seen it all" and he wants to pour it into great stories just for you.
Keep an eye open in your favorite book store for the day this book arrives and buy it before it sells out. I know it will.
irene brodsky
author of poetry unplugged
and adventures of silly kitty, princess jasmine and first puppy.
I am also proud to be a friend of Mr. Weene!
Mr. Weene is an excellent writer who weaves realistic tales that remind you of the girl next door, the every day woman, family issues, religion,
relationships, and anything else that could occur in anyone's life.
His characters are so real, you think they must be real. But they come from the creative mind of Kenneth Weene. In his lifetime, he has surely "been there and seen it all" and he wants to pour it into great stories just for you.
Keep an eye open in your favorite book store for the day this book arrives and buy it before it sells out. I know it will.
irene brodsky
author of poetry unplugged
and adventures of silly kitty, princess jasmine and first puppy.
I am also proud to be a friend of Mr. Weene!
April 23, 2012
Through this unique book, we follow the memories of one man's time in an insane asylum. He has voluntarily put himself in, and could leave at any time. He finds the asylum life predictable and safe – until some of his friends die, others marry and one of the doctors is killed. Finally deciding he's ready to venture into the real world once more, he leaves the confines of the asylum.
Memoirs from the Asylum is an unusual book that gives the reader an inside look at something we'd rather ignore – the insane. It's a series of vignettes, intimate looks at each of the residents, and some of the staff, who may be just as crazy as the inmates.
I highly recommend this book. It is powerful, poignant, humorous and heart rending. It leaves the reader feeling as if they've just made the same journey as the main character and raises questions about the world of mental health.
Memoirs from the Asylum is an unusual book that gives the reader an inside look at something we'd rather ignore – the insane. It's a series of vignettes, intimate looks at each of the residents, and some of the staff, who may be just as crazy as the inmates.
I highly recommend this book. It is powerful, poignant, humorous and heart rending. It leaves the reader feeling as if they've just made the same journey as the main character and raises questions about the world of mental health.
August 14, 2020
This is an intense book set in an insane asylum in the 1970’s. The main characters are two mentally ill inmates and a young resident psychologist. The setting is bleak, and the pain and misery are palpable, yet there are glimmers of hope and humor throughout. It didn’t end the way I wanted it to. Maybe that’s why it seemed so real. That, and the fact that Kenneth is a psychologist himself. I know we have a long way to go, but I hope books like this are helping change the way mentally ill patients are treated.
June 27, 2015
Nothing uplifting in this book, just sad, tragic and hopeless. Maybe it just reflects the despair of the author's experience. The suggestion on the back cover that it is reminiscent of J.D. Salinger's style is outrageous or extremely generous at best.
August 19, 2016
Darkly beautiful
Reading this story gave me a clearer and sympathetic feel for the affects mental illness has on the afflicted as well as the staff who care for them. This is a terrific read.
Reading this story gave me a clearer and sympathetic feel for the affects mental illness has on the afflicted as well as the staff who care for them. This is a terrific read.
June 15, 2010
This is an authentic look at the tragedy of mental illnes. It is uncompromising and relentless in the protrayal of its characters. It is at once disturbing and fascinating, and refreshingly honest.
October 17, 2010
Absolutely insane-pun intended. You will not put it down.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews