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Wreaking
'People who say there aren't any brilliant literary novels about contemporary England anymore have obviously never read this.' Irvine WelshA brilliantly imagined and unsettling novel from the award-winning author of Heliopolis and The Amnesia ClinicThree solitary characters remember their shared past in a sprawling, derelict psychiatric hospital on the English a turbulent summer in the aftermath of the hospital's closure that culminated in a shocking, life-altering accident. But the more each tries to comprehend the past, the more elusive it becomes. Wreaking is an intricate, labyrinthine novel about the opiate power of place, the fragility of sanity and the fickle nature of memory.
404 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 25, 2013
6 people are currently reading
769 people want to read
About the author
James Scudamore
12 books31 followersJames Scudamore is the author of the novels English Monsters, Wreaking, Heliopolis, and The Amnesia Clinic. He has received the Somerset Maugham Award and been nominated for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Man Booker Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 8, 2014
“When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.”
-----Criss Jami, an American author
And that's probably what I was feeling about myself while reading this extraordinarily unique novel of James Scudamore, called Wreaking, which is based on the lives and past of three hermitical characters revolving around a desolate and forgotten psychiatric hospital, named Wreaking on the English coast. An eerie and creepy tale, at the same time, an enthralling and captivating tale which will pull you into its very psychotic core and leave you with a claustrophobic feeling into the preposterous and freakish world of three deranged characters.
PS: And you are the only sane individual among these set of insane characters.
I'd like to thank the author, James Scudamore and his publisher, Louise Court, for sending me over a copy of his incredible novel, in return for an honest and unbiased review.
Jasper, Cleo, Ronald, Oliver, Carol, Mona & Victor-all these seven absurd and freakish characters together contribute and establish that undying bond of attachment and liking among the readers with this psychotic asylum, Wreaking. There is no synopsis to this novel, the more you turn the pages, the more it reveals its secrets and the hidden and forgotten tales that make Wreaking, the book, weirdly interesting. It is about the past that you cannot let go of it, and about those dead and most loved individuals who are holding and clinging on to too tightly and without your knowledge, these factors happen to affect your life so strikingly.
Past: Jasper Scriven, an ex-teacher and a victim of lung disease, lives in the dilapidated mental asylum, Wreaking, in the south of England, which he bought with his dead wife's money, intending to turn it into a private school. Flash forward to the present: But now his dream seems lost and forgotten just like the crumbling and shabby corridors of Wreaking and he collects case histories about the patients once resided in Wreaking and pens them down to incorporate a book of his own. Apart from recollecting the case histories, Jasper ponders upon the lives of individuals, especially, his estranged daughter, Cleo.
Cleo, who has one real and one false eye, earns her living as a video editor, is secretly watched by Roland who is a disaffected underworld perpetrator, and works with a nasty wheelchair bound pornographer, Victor. And Roland's great friend, Oliver used to pop-by Wreaking to take drugs or smash things up. Roland's mother, Mona, used to be a nurse in Wreaking and now she we see her as the alter-ego of Carol, who used to be a patient of Wreaking. All these characters contribute to "the accident" in Wreaking and the whole story revolves around "the accident".
Scudamore's purpose to portray these characters was to create confusion among our minds and not to let the readers judge them. As the plot advances, Scudamore crafts a morass of seedy and unpleasant past which seems like it is happening in the present. And Scudamore has a deep psychological grip on his characters, which are portrayed as multifaceted, flawed and sympathetic human beings, all achingly vulnerable, all wracked by fear and need and guilt. This book will leave you frustrated but then again in the climax, you might feel good about its effects.
Read this to understand the underlying beauty in this deep, emotional tale about a mental asylum, Wreaking.
-----Criss Jami, an American author
And that's probably what I was feeling about myself while reading this extraordinarily unique novel of James Scudamore, called Wreaking, which is based on the lives and past of three hermitical characters revolving around a desolate and forgotten psychiatric hospital, named Wreaking on the English coast. An eerie and creepy tale, at the same time, an enthralling and captivating tale which will pull you into its very psychotic core and leave you with a claustrophobic feeling into the preposterous and freakish world of three deranged characters.
PS: And you are the only sane individual among these set of insane characters.
I'd like to thank the author, James Scudamore and his publisher, Louise Court, for sending me over a copy of his incredible novel, in return for an honest and unbiased review.
Jasper, Cleo, Ronald, Oliver, Carol, Mona & Victor-all these seven absurd and freakish characters together contribute and establish that undying bond of attachment and liking among the readers with this psychotic asylum, Wreaking. There is no synopsis to this novel, the more you turn the pages, the more it reveals its secrets and the hidden and forgotten tales that make Wreaking, the book, weirdly interesting. It is about the past that you cannot let go of it, and about those dead and most loved individuals who are holding and clinging on to too tightly and without your knowledge, these factors happen to affect your life so strikingly.
Past: Jasper Scriven, an ex-teacher and a victim of lung disease, lives in the dilapidated mental asylum, Wreaking, in the south of England, which he bought with his dead wife's money, intending to turn it into a private school. Flash forward to the present: But now his dream seems lost and forgotten just like the crumbling and shabby corridors of Wreaking and he collects case histories about the patients once resided in Wreaking and pens them down to incorporate a book of his own. Apart from recollecting the case histories, Jasper ponders upon the lives of individuals, especially, his estranged daughter, Cleo.
Cleo, who has one real and one false eye, earns her living as a video editor, is secretly watched by Roland who is a disaffected underworld perpetrator, and works with a nasty wheelchair bound pornographer, Victor. And Roland's great friend, Oliver used to pop-by Wreaking to take drugs or smash things up. Roland's mother, Mona, used to be a nurse in Wreaking and now she we see her as the alter-ego of Carol, who used to be a patient of Wreaking. All these characters contribute to "the accident" in Wreaking and the whole story revolves around "the accident".
Scudamore's purpose to portray these characters was to create confusion among our minds and not to let the readers judge them. As the plot advances, Scudamore crafts a morass of seedy and unpleasant past which seems like it is happening in the present. And Scudamore has a deep psychological grip on his characters, which are portrayed as multifaceted, flawed and sympathetic human beings, all achingly vulnerable, all wracked by fear and need and guilt. This book will leave you frustrated but then again in the climax, you might feel good about its effects.
Read this to understand the underlying beauty in this deep, emotional tale about a mental asylum, Wreaking.
April 4, 2021
3 1/2 stars. This was quite good! Really well written. Vivid descriptions & sense of place. A large cast of characters, a la Charles Dickens, but it's not too overwhelming. Kind of drags a bit at times in terms of pace and plot. Reminded me often of JD Ballard. The characters do some pretty fucked up things, but that's also part of the dark glee of the reading experience. It was a good book to read after Clare Fuller's "Unsettled Ground" - this book is much less plot-y, in comparison, but overall it's impressive. I'm interested in British writers who get obsessed with derelict, abandoned, falling apart places...
January 18, 2015
The Wreaking of the title of James Scudamore's novel is a vast disused mental hospital on the south coast, close to a bleakly fading seaside town. After its closure, Wreaking is bought by Jasper Scriven, an unstable, grieving single father, who brings his troubled teenage daughter Cleo with him to live in the eerie isolation of empty hospital wards and endless echoing corridors. But what happened at Wreaking to estrange them, and what horrific accident resulted in the loss of Cleo's eye? Why, years later, is the adult Cleo being stalked by Roland, a petty criminal who works for a grotesquely seedy, sinister boss, living in a dankly threatening storage unit under a railway arch? And what of Wreaking's former inmates and staff? Mona and Carole both frequented Wreaking in the past, and are now living in a rundown guest house - but which was the nurse and which was the patient?
As you may have guessed, Wreaking is far from a barrel of laughs: it is, in fact, one of the bleakest novels I've read in a long time. Filled with a powerful, pervasive air of decay and degeneration - both physical and mental - it gave me a sense of profound unease. That isn't to say it isn't an exceptional novel - it is. It's a beautifully crafted book that is made all the more unsettling by the quality of Scudamore's prose, a well-proportioned mix of the poetic and the deliberately and depressingly mundane. The use of language, the awkwardly off-kilter characters and the ever-present air of dread that hangs over the entire novel reminded me of Nicola Barker's Darkmans, or Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, and those aren't comparisons I would make lightly.
Wreaking flits between each character's past and present, piecing together the connections between them. At one time or another, they all inhabited Wreaking - or perhaps it inhabited them. Each of them is an irreparably damaged individual, and Wreaking appears to be a remarkably damaging environment. For all its work to cure the insane when it was a functioning psychiatric hospital, once closed down Wreaking seems to breed madness, the crumbling building and its overgrown grounds feeding off the mental deterioration of everyone who comes into contact with it, from the deluded Jasper and the fearful, lonely Cleo to awkward, shambling Roland and his sadistic troublemaker of a friend, Oliver.
The story of Jasper, Cleo and Roland is gradually untangled through a non-linear plot structure that at times feels like a slowly developing nightmare in which unspeakable terrors are always around the corner, but nonetheless always unseen: everything Scudamore withholds is every bit as significant as what he reveals.
All this said, from an entirely subjective point of view, I would be hard-pushed to say I enjoyed reading Wreaking, and there were times when I almost decided not to finish it. I suspect, however, that this has a lot more to do with my personal state of mind than the novel itself; it deals with a number of topics I find difficult to read about. It's a remarkable book, however, and it's hard to find fault with its incredibly skilled construction.
As you may have guessed, Wreaking is far from a barrel of laughs: it is, in fact, one of the bleakest novels I've read in a long time. Filled with a powerful, pervasive air of decay and degeneration - both physical and mental - it gave me a sense of profound unease. That isn't to say it isn't an exceptional novel - it is. It's a beautifully crafted book that is made all the more unsettling by the quality of Scudamore's prose, a well-proportioned mix of the poetic and the deliberately and depressingly mundane. The use of language, the awkwardly off-kilter characters and the ever-present air of dread that hangs over the entire novel reminded me of Nicola Barker's Darkmans, or Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, and those aren't comparisons I would make lightly.
Wreaking flits between each character's past and present, piecing together the connections between them. At one time or another, they all inhabited Wreaking - or perhaps it inhabited them. Each of them is an irreparably damaged individual, and Wreaking appears to be a remarkably damaging environment. For all its work to cure the insane when it was a functioning psychiatric hospital, once closed down Wreaking seems to breed madness, the crumbling building and its overgrown grounds feeding off the mental deterioration of everyone who comes into contact with it, from the deluded Jasper and the fearful, lonely Cleo to awkward, shambling Roland and his sadistic troublemaker of a friend, Oliver.
The story of Jasper, Cleo and Roland is gradually untangled through a non-linear plot structure that at times feels like a slowly developing nightmare in which unspeakable terrors are always around the corner, but nonetheless always unseen: everything Scudamore withholds is every bit as significant as what he reveals.
All this said, from an entirely subjective point of view, I would be hard-pushed to say I enjoyed reading Wreaking, and there were times when I almost decided not to finish it. I suspect, however, that this has a lot more to do with my personal state of mind than the novel itself; it deals with a number of topics I find difficult to read about. It's a remarkable book, however, and it's hard to find fault with its incredibly skilled construction.
September 12, 2023
This is a really good book. Totally unexpected - I think the paperbacks cover, title and synopsis kind of paint an image of this book being a psychological thriller but that couldn’t be further from what it is.
For me this was really quite a beautiful story, very sad at times and quite impressively I found the author has a masterful way of delicately touching on themes of humanity in a very nuanced way.
I was really struck by the narratives structure which was completely non linear. Sometimes I find this kind of style a little disorientating and hard to follow but for this book it worked perfectly and really added to the slow reveal of the relationship between the main characters.
Overall I would definitely recommend this book.
For me this was really quite a beautiful story, very sad at times and quite impressively I found the author has a masterful way of delicately touching on themes of humanity in a very nuanced way.
I was really struck by the narratives structure which was completely non linear. Sometimes I find this kind of style a little disorientating and hard to follow but for this book it worked perfectly and really added to the slow reveal of the relationship between the main characters.
Overall I would definitely recommend this book.
January 21, 2024
It was really well written - emotive and full of imagery that I wanted to explore. I hated all the characters though. They were constructed well - intended to be to some degree sympathetic or at least engaging. I don't think it was a flaw in the writing that put me off. I've just lost interest in reading about shitty people hurting one another to no real purpose and an inevitable end.
May 12, 2020
If you're also a sucker for abandoned psychiatric hospitals, flawed relationships, and unpretty family drama, this is your thing. Importantly, JS is an incredibly evocative writer, and I felt the pacing was spot-on.
October 20, 2018
Great psychological realism
June 9, 2015
I loved this book. An update on the Gothic novel, it’s nor for anyone looking for a light read. Not a lot happens but the atmosphere is what leads you into its dark depths. In many ways it reminded me of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ with its trapped inhabitants hiding in a decaying building.
The Wreaking of the title is a vast, derelict, psychiatric hospital on the south coats neat to a fading seaside town. After its closure, Jasper Scriven buys it with optimistic but ultimately doomed, plans to turn it into a school A grieving single father he moves in with his current partner who soon abandons bot the project and him and his teenage daughter Cleo.
The echoing, abandoned corridors and guano streaked wards provide a dark and unsettling backdrop as Wreaking begins to fall apart as does Jasper who is now living there alone. He stalks his kingdom, now a millstone around his neck, with an oxygen cylinder and estranged from Cleo after a horrific accident. She has built a new life for herself away from him.
But Wreaking itself still reaches out to the nearby town and to its ex-patients such as Mona and Carole who live in a shabby guest house. It’s never completely revealed who was the nurse and who was the patient. There are other characters who appear and disappear and you’re never sure how they’re connected. Roland, Cleo’s stalker, a petty criminal who works for a very unpleasant boss living in hos own Wreaking, a storage unit under a railway arch,
Cleo reluctantly returns to Wreaking and Jasper’s theatre. There’s to be no escape.
I thought that the author must have wither been an urban explorer or viewed relevant websites as he evokes Wreaking so well. The encroaching vegetation, the buildings falling in on themselves – it’s almost Castle Groan. The underwater room from which patients could sit and look up and watch the life in te lake above them is one of the Holy Grails of the urb-ex world.
You could argue that Wreaking is heavy on atmosphere and light on plot but that was part of its appeal for me as I’m a fan of dark fiction and this has the makings to become a classic.
May 22, 2022
I don’t remember how this book came to me but it was on a to-read list for years. I think it was the cover art with orange lettering among grey foliage that made me finally pull the trigger. Happily, it didn’t sit long, and turned out to be fantastic.
My perception of the characters shifted drastically during the course of the book but revealing the specifics might spoil a reader’s experience. Scudamore uses the present tense and third person omniscient as he gives his three main characters alternating chapters to tell their stories. And the intertwined stories reveal the early façade of one character in particular to be wildly misleading.
The three narratives reconstruct Cleo’s father, Jasper Scrivens, installing his family, such as it was, in a moldering mental health hospital that gives the novel its name. On the surface, an event at Wreaking leaving Cleo with one false eye is the crux of the book, but the ramifications of her father’s hopeless ambitions for the place provide the symbolic underpinning. Who belongs where is increasingly important. Quiet Roland bears witness to almost everything and his story, while explicitly longing and repressed, ultimately hints at redemption. His quiet desperation resonates, making him unexpectedly sympathetic.
The writing here is flawless. Scudamore gives us a splendid piece of modern British fiction. This apparently little-noticed novel deserves more attention. It’s quite good, even if drab readers may mistake the brutal psychological realism for an uneventful plot.
My perception of the characters shifted drastically during the course of the book but revealing the specifics might spoil a reader’s experience. Scudamore uses the present tense and third person omniscient as he gives his three main characters alternating chapters to tell their stories. And the intertwined stories reveal the early façade of one character in particular to be wildly misleading.
The three narratives reconstruct Cleo’s father, Jasper Scrivens, installing his family, such as it was, in a moldering mental health hospital that gives the novel its name. On the surface, an event at Wreaking leaving Cleo with one false eye is the crux of the book, but the ramifications of her father’s hopeless ambitions for the place provide the symbolic underpinning. Who belongs where is increasingly important. Quiet Roland bears witness to almost everything and his story, while explicitly longing and repressed, ultimately hints at redemption. His quiet desperation resonates, making him unexpectedly sympathetic.
The writing here is flawless. Scudamore gives us a splendid piece of modern British fiction. This apparently little-noticed novel deserves more attention. It’s quite good, even if drab readers may mistake the brutal psychological realism for an uneventful plot.
January 28, 2015
There's a Leunig cartoon where a man and wife are at the breakfast table and she looks up from the newspaper and says "What a pity. Your interesting character has just been categorised as a personality disorder". Or words to that effect. This book made me think of that and of how as an anxious child I used to engage in "magical thinking" where I had to compulsively count all the time to make things work out OK. One of the characters in this book has to watch planes fly over to make sure they don't crash. What I'm getting at is that this book makes you think about all those funny little nervous habits people have (but would never admit to) and how close we could seem at times to madness without crossing the line (or, perhaps, without checking ourselves in voluntarily to Wreaking and actually being assessed as such by the system). Are we sane or teetering on the edge? This book is very well written and describes the things we'd probably rather have left undescribed. The characters are complex and the author captures their foibles, anxieties and nowhere lives well. The plot is bleak so don't come here looking for a good time. Will matters be resolved positively? Maybe. But on balance maybe not. You're left to decide.
December 13, 2014
It was ok.
I can't say that it was great for me. Can't say why really either.
It was sent to me as a subscription book from my local bookshop. Reccomended because the author was somewhat local and we live near the abandoned Fairmile hospital (now luxury appartments) having a love for asylum fiction and a close link to fairmile thorugh friends and family as patients and nurses. I thought that I'd love it.
I guess it just didn't hit the right notes for me. Too clinical perhaps?
Good charecterisation, well hatched plots, interesting events but I guess I wanted it to be something else.
I can't fault the book really, just that it didn't suit my tastes.
I can't say that it was great for me. Can't say why really either.
It was sent to me as a subscription book from my local bookshop. Reccomended because the author was somewhat local and we live near the abandoned Fairmile hospital (now luxury appartments) having a love for asylum fiction and a close link to fairmile thorugh friends and family as patients and nurses. I thought that I'd love it.
I guess it just didn't hit the right notes for me. Too clinical perhaps?
Good charecterisation, well hatched plots, interesting events but I guess I wanted it to be something else.
I can't fault the book really, just that it didn't suit my tastes.
April 16, 2014
Got this book in Goodreads Giveaway. Very good, interesting read. It kept my attention well. It was somewhat disturbing as all the characters are somewhat mentally ill, some more than others, which is expected since the story revolves around the old mental hospital, wreaking. The hospital is closed, falling down, neglected and has been closed for years. This seems to follow the pattern of the characters in the book. There are disturbing issues in this book, however, they are fascinating at the same time and hold your attention. Very good read.
September 7, 2015
Amidst a disused Victorian mental asylum on England's south coast, this novel is sublime. It's a hauntingly beautiful tale of love, loss and mental illness.
The craft of the wordsmith is worthy of note here. The whole thing creeps along at a steady contented meter. The asylum lives and breathes. It's character infects the personalities of the surrounding cast. It's despairing and loving all at once. Like Hanif Kureishi's "Love In A Blue Time" or Jon McGregor's masterful "If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things"
Oh to create a world such as this!
The craft of the wordsmith is worthy of note here. The whole thing creeps along at a steady contented meter. The asylum lives and breathes. It's character infects the personalities of the surrounding cast. It's despairing and loving all at once. Like Hanif Kureishi's "Love In A Blue Time" or Jon McGregor's masterful "If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things"
Oh to create a world such as this!
October 20, 2013
This isn't the type of book that I would normally read but I really enjoyed it. It is a fantastic exploration of mental health, set around an ex-psychiatric hospital. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way and the plot skips forwards and backwards in time effectively. The only thing that let it down for me was that I guessed the ending about halfway through the book.
April 15, 2015
I received this book free through Goodreads First Reads. I thought the book was very well written, and had a good pace. The story is set in a mental hospital and even though the characters are troubled individuals, their stories are interesting. I enjoyed reading "Wreaking" and found I wanted to know more about the characters as I got further in the book.
April 26, 2021
Aside from a minor quibble, I enjoyed spending time with James Scudamore’s characters, disturbing as they are. It’s beautifully written and plotted, and kept me turning the page. https://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecd...
November 26, 2013
Read this book in a short time. Not sure what I feel about it. Very well written and quite addictive. Characters complex and well explored. Not a happy book and quite disturbing in many ways. I've now closed the book but I'm sure it will haunt me in the days to come.
September 19, 2014
Met this author at Costa Book Award evening at local library. His reding from this book got by interest enough to read it. A story of relationships, family, friends, mental health issues and reconciliation of life. Interesting and kept you reading to see what happened throughout.
December 19, 2015
Bit too plotless for me, but it was interesting to see how the characters unraveled from the past. Worth reading once, but I probably wouldn't read it again or recommend it to most.
June 8, 2016
A poignant and compelling layered story about families, mental fragility and illness.
April 14, 2014
very very good book, couldnt put it down!!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews