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Madhouse Fog: A Novel
After a thirty-something altruistic punk rocker fleeing a troubled marriage is hired for a grant-writing job at a southern California psychiatric hospital, he quickly gets entangled in a neuropsychiatrist’s mysterious research into the collective unconscious, and becomes romantically involved with a former patient. A metaphysical thriller peopled with memorable characters set in a picturesque town along the Pacific coast, Carswell gives readers a wild ride into the unknown... and back again.
- GenresFiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 14, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 31, 2013
The Golden State has inspired its share of strange fiction. Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 and Aimee Bender's The Girl in the Flammable Skirt all zero in on the peculiar weirdness specific to Southern California.
Add Madhouse Fog, Sean Carswell's third novel and fifth book, to the list. Though Carswell is from Florida, he's lived in California for more than a decade and teaches English at California State University, Channel Islands in Camarillo.
His novel begins innocently enough, with an earnest young grant writer's first day on the job. He attends orientation, meets some colleagues and promptly gets lost on the sprawling grounds of the hospital that has hired him to secure funding for its endeavors. It's all perfectly ordinary except that Oak View, as he is reminded by one of the doctors, is no ordinary institution:
"A psych hospital is a bad place to look lost. Someone will find a room for you, sooner or later."
The grant writer never really gets oriented to his new surroundings. A neuroscientist seeks his support for a project involving "the collective unconscious" that sounds suspiciously like telepathy. A blind yet meticulously well-groomed ad executive who's strangely invested in the outcome of these experiments keeps turning up. And the grant writer's past intrudes on the present in unexpected ways. Is he being followed or is working in a psych hospital making him paranoid? An exchange with a hospital staff member offers a clue:
"If you study metaphysics, there are no coincidences."
"I don't study metaphysics."
However, as the grant writer's skepticism begins to crumble, the novel takes off in surprising directions. Though Madhouse Fog is not a mystery, metaphysical or otherwise, the grant writer serves as a reluctant detective who must get to the bottom of the weirdness afoot at Oak View.
Madhouse Fog is a delightful look at human communication and how we know what we know. More gently weird than savagely strange, it reads like a mash-up of Richard Brautigan and Haruki Murakami. (Or maybe the wind-up bird the grant writer keeps on his desk is just a coincidence.)
What's definitely not a coincidence is that CSU, Channel Islands, the college where Carswell teaches, used to be a state mental hospital.
Add Madhouse Fog, Sean Carswell's third novel and fifth book, to the list. Though Carswell is from Florida, he's lived in California for more than a decade and teaches English at California State University, Channel Islands in Camarillo.
His novel begins innocently enough, with an earnest young grant writer's first day on the job. He attends orientation, meets some colleagues and promptly gets lost on the sprawling grounds of the hospital that has hired him to secure funding for its endeavors. It's all perfectly ordinary except that Oak View, as he is reminded by one of the doctors, is no ordinary institution:
"A psych hospital is a bad place to look lost. Someone will find a room for you, sooner or later."
The grant writer never really gets oriented to his new surroundings. A neuroscientist seeks his support for a project involving "the collective unconscious" that sounds suspiciously like telepathy. A blind yet meticulously well-groomed ad executive who's strangely invested in the outcome of these experiments keeps turning up. And the grant writer's past intrudes on the present in unexpected ways. Is he being followed or is working in a psych hospital making him paranoid? An exchange with a hospital staff member offers a clue:
"If you study metaphysics, there are no coincidences."
"I don't study metaphysics."
However, as the grant writer's skepticism begins to crumble, the novel takes off in surprising directions. Though Madhouse Fog is not a mystery, metaphysical or otherwise, the grant writer serves as a reluctant detective who must get to the bottom of the weirdness afoot at Oak View.
Madhouse Fog is a delightful look at human communication and how we know what we know. More gently weird than savagely strange, it reads like a mash-up of Richard Brautigan and Haruki Murakami. (Or maybe the wind-up bird the grant writer keeps on his desk is just a coincidence.)
What's definitely not a coincidence is that CSU, Channel Islands, the college where Carswell teaches, used to be a state mental hospital.
July 26, 2013
What made The Matrix amazing wasn't the revelation that the world we know might be fake, but the idea that we can use that knowledge to manipulate hyperreality. The Matrix sequels kind of forgot about that and got hung up on saving sweaty, dingy Zion. But Sean Carswell's appropriately dubbed "metaphysical thriller" seizes the fun part and runs with it. Madhouse Fog is narrated with tight language and humble humor by a punk rocker-turned-grant writer who takes a job in a mental institution and stumbles upon research into the "collective unconscious," a space that opens up all sorts of good and evil possibilities for philanthropy, advertising, personal healing and wacky interactions with Einstein and African griots.
Although the plot can be a little hard to follow, I was always happy to be along for the ride, thanks to the novel's post-postmodern sensibility. By that I mean: It never forgets we live in a highly mediated world, but it knows that we need to construct lives for ourselves once the dust has settled on deconstruction. There's a gentleness to the protagonist and the book's worldview that I love. For example, when he sees a production of Waiting for Godot, he finds himself transcending the play's intellectual concerns, and its bleakness. He sees Vladimir and Estragon's babble as "a way of saying, 'We share this life together. Whatever voids we face, whatever emptiness surrounds us, it's okay.'"
This novel is a rare thing: a funny, expertly written caper; an atheist's spiritual text; and a love story whose female characters are never trite.
Although the plot can be a little hard to follow, I was always happy to be along for the ride, thanks to the novel's post-postmodern sensibility. By that I mean: It never forgets we live in a highly mediated world, but it knows that we need to construct lives for ourselves once the dust has settled on deconstruction. There's a gentleness to the protagonist and the book's worldview that I love. For example, when he sees a production of Waiting for Godot, he finds himself transcending the play's intellectual concerns, and its bleakness. He sees Vladimir and Estragon's babble as "a way of saying, 'We share this life together. Whatever voids we face, whatever emptiness surrounds us, it's okay.'"
This novel is a rare thing: a funny, expertly written caper; an atheist's spiritual text; and a love story whose female characters are never trite.
August 12, 2013
I started Madhouse Fog and had a hard time putting it down. The characters are interesting and quirky but feel realistic/believable. I don't want to spoil the journey for readers so I'll just say the metaphysical considerations of this plotline are intriguing and original. Carswell has a true gift for dialogue and it really shines in this novel. This is a stellar read, funny, suspenseful, and thought-provoking. Readers are going to love the individual characters and love how this story evolves and resolves by novel's end. Get ready for a fun ride!
June 3, 2016
Almost a study on ads.
A mix of coming to terms with reality while battling the absurd nature of modern day ads, Madhouse Fog has the unique effect of being educative and enlightening. The first half of the book presents facts that are blended into theory in the second half. An enjoyable book with an interesting twist that makes the mind wonder long after it's over. I highly recommend this book for both young twenty-somethings and anyone with curious about the mind.
A mix of coming to terms with reality while battling the absurd nature of modern day ads, Madhouse Fog has the unique effect of being educative and enlightening. The first half of the book presents facts that are blended into theory in the second half. An enjoyable book with an interesting twist that makes the mind wonder long after it's over. I highly recommend this book for both young twenty-somethings and anyone with curious about the mind.
December 18, 2016
A really interesting, bizarre book with great characters and a terrific plot that goes in directions I never saw coming. An interesting take on both the mental health and advertising fields too.
October 23, 2019
This gets (a good) four stars from me, because: (a) it has a fairly slow start (b) it deals with psychology (though not hardcore experimental psychology) and a bit of philosophy in acceptable ways (many authors dumb down far too much—I liked the easy mention of 'ontology', even though the central character didn't know what that meant) and (c) it has a rock theme running through it. Having said that, there are problems. 1. The characters are not very deep or intelligent. 2. The story offers on a specific (Jungian-esque) ontology but does not really deliver. 3. I don't like dogs. (Okay, that last one is just me.)
Ultimately, this story disappoints because (1) the plotline is hackneyed, even if placed in a metaphysical context and (2) this could have challenged the reader so much more, but preferred easy atmospheric scenes involving icecream.
So why as many as four stars? Well, I liked the voice and I enjoyed reading it. It was easy to see where the author was coming from, and too few authors even bother to step beyond the obvious (intuitive) levels of the human condition. This isn't going to take you to new heights, but at least it challenges the basis of something that you do every day: Reading. Fundamentally, we are creatures of qualia, not creatures of words. And this author understands that. (And perhaps that is why he likes dogs ... and squirrels.)
Ultimately, this story disappoints because (1) the plotline is hackneyed, even if placed in a metaphysical context and (2) this could have challenged the reader so much more, but preferred easy atmospheric scenes involving icecream.
So why as many as four stars? Well, I liked the voice and I enjoyed reading it. It was easy to see where the author was coming from, and too few authors even bother to step beyond the obvious (intuitive) levels of the human condition. This isn't going to take you to new heights, but at least it challenges the basis of something that you do every day: Reading. Fundamentally, we are creatures of qualia, not creatures of words. And this author understands that. (And perhaps that is why he likes dogs ... and squirrels.)
March 20, 2018
I don't want to say a lot of unpleasant things about Madhouse Fog. I think that when I dislike a book, my first reaction is to get all snarky, but I don't like that in other reviews and I'm going to jettison that entirely here. I'll only say that I didn't vibe with the writing style of Madhouse Fog at all, specifically a lot of the stuff between Charles and Lola.
There is some fascinating plot stuff involving the Jungian collective unconscious, but sadly it takes up less than a third of the novel and never quite hits the peak it promises.
There is some fascinating plot stuff involving the Jungian collective unconscious, but sadly it takes up less than a third of the novel and never quite hits the peak it promises.
December 13, 2020
Eh, it's OK. It drew me in with the talk about "voices" at the beginning, but quite frankly it was a pretty mediocre, cliche and sometimes just outright bizarre - not in a good way -- story, imo.
June 15, 2021
The subject matter of "Madhouse Fog" held my attention because I find psychology fascinating, and I felt a real connection to the setting in this story! The writing is witty and subtly funny; the characters are interesting, and the chapter endings compelled me to keep reading. I think the idea of the collective unconscious as a mechanism of mind travel is unique and intriguing. Well done, SC! Write on!
September 15, 2013
The only thing I don't like about Sean Carswell's books is that I plan to read them over xx days but end up enjoying them so much that I read them in just 2 or 3 nights.
The story in this book was quite unusual and nearly lost me but, as always, paid off in the end. I enjoyed the little references to sean's previous books which were slipped in (I caught 2 but there were probably more).
Very good read. I look forward to his next publications!!
The story in this book was quite unusual and nearly lost me but, as always, paid off in the end. I enjoyed the little references to sean's previous books which were slipped in (I caught 2 but there were probably more).
Very good read. I look forward to his next publications!!
March 3, 2014
Well written, but a pretty cheesy concept I had a hard time getting behind.
August 8, 2013
Best book I've read all year.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews