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Nights in the Asylum
Written in spare yet sensuous prose, "Nights in the Asylum" is the story of three people seeking shelter; it is also a story of home, of belonging, of leaving one home and trying to make another, where-ever and how-ever you can.Stricken with grief and guilt following the death of her daughter, Miri flees the city for the quiet calm of Havana Gardens, a once fine but now dilapidated mansion built for her grandmother. On the road she rescues Aziz, an Afghan refugee on the run from detention; then, in the attic of the old house, Miri discovers Suzette Moran and her baby daughter hiding, and grants them refuge.Slowly, in the hot confined spaces of the house, the three runaways unravel their stories, but when Suzette's policeman husband comes looking for her, it sparks a chain of events that will disrupt their already fragile peace.
320 pages, Paperback
First published May 18, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 21, 2020
You could be forgiven for thinking that a new genre is emerging in Australian literary fiction: the genre of "escape" fiction. Not escapist, there is certainly enough of that around, but "escape" - the act of leaving a bad place in the hope of reaching somewhere better, or at least acceptable. Grace by Robert Drewe would fit, with its protagonist fleeing an inner-city stalker for the wilds of north-western Australia; and there are escapes, of sorts, in both Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones and Candle Life by Venero Armanno.
Escapes, in this context, should not be confused with "journeys"; the two are very different. Epic fantasy utilises the concept of the physical journey as a means of transforming the protagonists from their initial state of innocence to hero status at journey's end. The literary fiction equivalent is the "road" novel, where the end is less important than the act of getting there, and the life changing events that are experienced along the way. This new "escape" genre almost dispenses with the journey, preferring to emphasise the arrival, or post-arrival, aspects of the story.
Such is certainly the case with Nights in the Asylum, a first novel by Australian writer Carol Lefevre. In this book, three very different characters find themselves in an old partly dilapidated mansion in an outback mining town. Each is fleeing a particular form of abuse and, while their respective journeys are described in the novel, "how" they got to the house seems of little importance. Indeed, very much of lesser import than the "why".
Miri, the novel's main character, has left her husband in Sydney after the death of their university-aged daughter, Alice. The triple blow of her daughter's psychiatric illness, followed by Miri's discovery of her husband's infidelities, and then the daughter's death, prove too much for her to cope with and she travels back to the mining town where she was born; back to the house her grandfather built for her Cuban grandmother. Along the way she picks up the hitch-hiking Aziz, a silent man of little English, who, we later find, has somehow escaped from an immigration detention centre and who seems intent on nothing more than never going back. Although the house is supposed to be locked up and empty, Miri finds local townswoman Suzette and her baby daughter hiding from her policeman husband in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
The arrival of the three in this house precipitates another journey in each of them. Aziz is trying to survive in a country he doesn't understand, fleeing the abuse that only a state can inflict on a person, searching for freedom. Suzette is also searching for freedom, but first has to discover the inner courage to escape her physically and mentally abusive husband in order to save her and her daughter's lives.
Miri initially thinks she has reached the end of her journey by returning to where she began. Yet this is just another starting off point for her. She was unable to save her daughter from herself, but discovers that she may just be able to save the others and, in the process, undergo a form of redemption.
It's a pretty good setup, all in all. It allows the author to explore three very different worlds, and three very different lives which just happen to intersect in one old house. Lefevre examines the intersecting story-line strands in chapters told from the different points-of-view of the main and subsidiary characters, in present time and in flashback, building up the layers of novel as she goes. Handled poorly this can be a recipe for disaster as the reader's focus changes too often and with too little delineation between strands. Lefevre doesn't fall into that trap and the overall effect of this technique adds, rather than detracts, from the final result.
The only quibble I have with the book relates to its ending. Suzette's husband comes looking for her and is suspicious of Miri, seemingly all alone in this great house. The presence of Aziz and Suzette becomes known to some sympathetic neighbours, but the more people who know of them only increases the likelihood that the police will be informed. Lefrevre decreases the size of her chapters and sentences, instilling a sense of urgency into the formulation of an escape plan, and ramping up the tension as the police spiral in towards them. And yet, at the end, it finishes in a rather off-hand manner. The reader isn't looking for a final "showdown" or resolution as in a mystery novel, but the final scene, of the main part of the novel, feels rather like a let-down.
The last part of the book consists of nine very short chapters describing a set of "undated photographs". You are led to believe these show the novel's protagonists at some time in the future, after the end of the novel, though I found the effect too obscure to render much enlightenment. Maybe if I'd paid more attention to the description of the characters or their surroundings during the course of the book I might have been better placed to appreciate these appendices. It's asking a lot of a reader to be that attentive.
I should say that I'm talking from my own perspective and failings here. In general, the book shows a talent for character, timing and place that augurs well for the future. My misgivings about various parts of the book can probably be explained by the fact that this is a first novel. If future efforts improve on this then they will be very good indeed.
Escapes, in this context, should not be confused with "journeys"; the two are very different. Epic fantasy utilises the concept of the physical journey as a means of transforming the protagonists from their initial state of innocence to hero status at journey's end. The literary fiction equivalent is the "road" novel, where the end is less important than the act of getting there, and the life changing events that are experienced along the way. This new "escape" genre almost dispenses with the journey, preferring to emphasise the arrival, or post-arrival, aspects of the story.
Such is certainly the case with Nights in the Asylum, a first novel by Australian writer Carol Lefevre. In this book, three very different characters find themselves in an old partly dilapidated mansion in an outback mining town. Each is fleeing a particular form of abuse and, while their respective journeys are described in the novel, "how" they got to the house seems of little importance. Indeed, very much of lesser import than the "why".
Miri, the novel's main character, has left her husband in Sydney after the death of their university-aged daughter, Alice. The triple blow of her daughter's psychiatric illness, followed by Miri's discovery of her husband's infidelities, and then the daughter's death, prove too much for her to cope with and she travels back to the mining town where she was born; back to the house her grandfather built for her Cuban grandmother. Along the way she picks up the hitch-hiking Aziz, a silent man of little English, who, we later find, has somehow escaped from an immigration detention centre and who seems intent on nothing more than never going back. Although the house is supposed to be locked up and empty, Miri finds local townswoman Suzette and her baby daughter hiding from her policeman husband in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
The arrival of the three in this house precipitates another journey in each of them. Aziz is trying to survive in a country he doesn't understand, fleeing the abuse that only a state can inflict on a person, searching for freedom. Suzette is also searching for freedom, but first has to discover the inner courage to escape her physically and mentally abusive husband in order to save her and her daughter's lives.
Miri initially thinks she has reached the end of her journey by returning to where she began. Yet this is just another starting off point for her. She was unable to save her daughter from herself, but discovers that she may just be able to save the others and, in the process, undergo a form of redemption.
It's a pretty good setup, all in all. It allows the author to explore three very different worlds, and three very different lives which just happen to intersect in one old house. Lefevre examines the intersecting story-line strands in chapters told from the different points-of-view of the main and subsidiary characters, in present time and in flashback, building up the layers of novel as she goes. Handled poorly this can be a recipe for disaster as the reader's focus changes too often and with too little delineation between strands. Lefevre doesn't fall into that trap and the overall effect of this technique adds, rather than detracts, from the final result.
The only quibble I have with the book relates to its ending. Suzette's husband comes looking for her and is suspicious of Miri, seemingly all alone in this great house. The presence of Aziz and Suzette becomes known to some sympathetic neighbours, but the more people who know of them only increases the likelihood that the police will be informed. Lefrevre decreases the size of her chapters and sentences, instilling a sense of urgency into the formulation of an escape plan, and ramping up the tension as the police spiral in towards them. And yet, at the end, it finishes in a rather off-hand manner. The reader isn't looking for a final "showdown" or resolution as in a mystery novel, but the final scene, of the main part of the novel, feels rather like a let-down.
The last part of the book consists of nine very short chapters describing a set of "undated photographs". You are led to believe these show the novel's protagonists at some time in the future, after the end of the novel, though I found the effect too obscure to render much enlightenment. Maybe if I'd paid more attention to the description of the characters or their surroundings during the course of the book I might have been better placed to appreciate these appendices. It's asking a lot of a reader to be that attentive.
I should say that I'm talking from my own perspective and failings here. In general, the book shows a talent for character, timing and place that augurs well for the future. My misgivings about various parts of the book can probably be explained by the fact that this is a first novel. If future efforts improve on this then they will be very good indeed.
November 12, 2021
Gripping. Stunning. Real.
June 1, 2017
detached and dreamy and didn't really go anywhere.
November 12, 2019
Waste of time. Learnt nothing, not entertained, it added no value to me whatsoever.
August 31, 2014
"If you believe that you will never need to seek asylum, think again. Catastrophe can turn a comfortable life inside out and leave any one of stranded, dependent on the kindness of strangers, or vulnerable to their cruelty -- as the characters in this sensuous and moving novel discover.
Set in a mining town in the Australian outback, Nights In The Asylum is the story of three people seeking shelter. Stricken with grief and guilt following the death of her daughter, Miri flees the city for the quiet calm of Havana Gardens, a once fine but now dilapidated mansion built for her grandmother. On the road, she rescues Aziz, an Afghan refugee on the run from detention: then, in the attic of the old house, Miri discovers Suzette Moran and her baby daughter hiding, and grants them refuge.
Slowly, in the hot confined spaces of the house, the three runaways unravel their stories, but when Suzette's policeman husband comes looking for her, it sparks a chain of events that will disrupt their already fragile peace."
**from back cover**
What a synopsis, right! As soon as I heard about this book and read the blurb on that back cover, I bought a copy immediately and was so siked to get into this. I was bummed to find it didn't have the level of creepiness or psychological tension I was hoping for. The opening was promising but it quickly turned pretty damn dull.
The novel opens with Miri and her husband Jack attending the funeral of their daughter, Alice. Miri is so distraught with the loss that she is soon placed in the psych ward of a nearby hospital. She later forgets how she gets there, but being an actress, finds she is soon able to convince the overseeing doctor to release her. She then decides to return to the town where she grew up and take up residence in her grandmother's old mansion, Havana Gardens. It's on her way to the mansion that she finds Aziz, a man from Kabul fleeing from the Taliban, near dead on the side of the road. She offers him a ride into town where he can find food & shelter, and over the course of the story, develops a close friendship with him. Miri also befriends Suzette (or Zett, as she goes by) and Zett's daughter, who are hiding in Havana Gardens mansion from Zett's crazed, abusive husband.
The story is definitely character driven, so I can understand a somewhat slower pace that comes with the territory. I just felt like with the elements that were there -- a girl's battle with an eating disorder, people in hiding, a crazy / abusive husband trying to hunt down his wife, a guy who violently lost his whole family & on the run from the Taliban -- I was just expecting more tension, more jaw dropping moments, more heartbreaking conversations... I don't know... just more. This story was soooo SLOW. What could have been a really compelling, taut read just left me feeling like a whole lotta nothing was being said or done. BOO.
I found Aziz's history interesting. His character could have made a more interesting stand-alone book just off his backstory.
Set in a mining town in the Australian outback, Nights In The Asylum is the story of three people seeking shelter. Stricken with grief and guilt following the death of her daughter, Miri flees the city for the quiet calm of Havana Gardens, a once fine but now dilapidated mansion built for her grandmother. On the road, she rescues Aziz, an Afghan refugee on the run from detention: then, in the attic of the old house, Miri discovers Suzette Moran and her baby daughter hiding, and grants them refuge.
Slowly, in the hot confined spaces of the house, the three runaways unravel their stories, but when Suzette's policeman husband comes looking for her, it sparks a chain of events that will disrupt their already fragile peace."
**from back cover**
What a synopsis, right! As soon as I heard about this book and read the blurb on that back cover, I bought a copy immediately and was so siked to get into this. I was bummed to find it didn't have the level of creepiness or psychological tension I was hoping for. The opening was promising but it quickly turned pretty damn dull.
The novel opens with Miri and her husband Jack attending the funeral of their daughter, Alice. Miri is so distraught with the loss that she is soon placed in the psych ward of a nearby hospital. She later forgets how she gets there, but being an actress, finds she is soon able to convince the overseeing doctor to release her. She then decides to return to the town where she grew up and take up residence in her grandmother's old mansion, Havana Gardens. It's on her way to the mansion that she finds Aziz, a man from Kabul fleeing from the Taliban, near dead on the side of the road. She offers him a ride into town where he can find food & shelter, and over the course of the story, develops a close friendship with him. Miri also befriends Suzette (or Zett, as she goes by) and Zett's daughter, who are hiding in Havana Gardens mansion from Zett's crazed, abusive husband.
The story is definitely character driven, so I can understand a somewhat slower pace that comes with the territory. I just felt like with the elements that were there -- a girl's battle with an eating disorder, people in hiding, a crazy / abusive husband trying to hunt down his wife, a guy who violently lost his whole family & on the run from the Taliban -- I was just expecting more tension, more jaw dropping moments, more heartbreaking conversations... I don't know... just more. This story was soooo SLOW. What could have been a really compelling, taut read just left me feeling like a whole lotta nothing was being said or done. BOO.
I found Aziz's history interesting. His character could have made a more interesting stand-alone book just off his backstory.
April 14, 2009
One of those books that I couldn't put down, but didn't want it to end.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews