What do you think?
Rate this book
Asylum: A personal, historical, natural inquiry in 103 lyric sections
This book-length sequence by the critically acclaimed poet is a seeker's story, revealing personal and historical traumas and how we search for understanding and meaning in their wake.
In Asylum, poet Jill Bialosky embarks on a Virgilian journey, building a narrative sequence from 103 elegant poems and prose sections that cohere in their intensity and their need to explore darkness and sustenance both.
Taken together, these piercing pieces--about her nascent calling as a writer; her sister's suicide and its still unfolding aftermath; the horror unleashed by World War II; the life cycle of the monarch butterfly; and the woods where she seeks asylum--form a moving story, powerfully braiding despair, survival, and hope. Bialosky considers the oppositions that govern our reason and unreason, our need to preserve and destruct. "What are words when they meet the action of what they attempt to modify?" she asks, exploring the possible salve of language in the face of pain and grief.
What Asylum delivers is a form of hard-won grace and an awareness of the cost of extreme violence, inexplicable loss, and the miraculous cycles of life, in work that carries Bialosky's art to a new level of urgency and achievement.
In Asylum, poet Jill Bialosky embarks on a Virgilian journey, building a narrative sequence from 103 elegant poems and prose sections that cohere in their intensity and their need to explore darkness and sustenance both.
Taken together, these piercing pieces--about her nascent calling as a writer; her sister's suicide and its still unfolding aftermath; the horror unleashed by World War II; the life cycle of the monarch butterfly; and the woods where she seeks asylum--form a moving story, powerfully braiding despair, survival, and hope. Bialosky considers the oppositions that govern our reason and unreason, our need to preserve and destruct. "What are words when they meet the action of what they attempt to modify?" she asks, exploring the possible salve of language in the face of pain and grief.
What Asylum delivers is a form of hard-won grace and an awareness of the cost of extreme violence, inexplicable loss, and the miraculous cycles of life, in work that carries Bialosky's art to a new level of urgency and achievement.
- GenresPoetryNonfictionMemoir
144 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2020
9 people are currently reading
216 people want to read
About the author
Jill Bialosky
20 books131 followersJill Bialosky was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied for her undergraduate degree at Ohio University and received a Master of Arts degree from the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Her collections of poems are Subterranean (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) and The End of Desire (1997). Bialosky is also the author of the novel House Under Snow (2002) and The Life Room (2007) and co-editor, with Helen Schulman, of the anthology Wanting A Child (1998).
Her poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review among other publications.
Bialosky has received a number of awards including the Elliot Coleman Award in Poetry. She is currently an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
Her collections of poems are Subterranean (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) and The End of Desire (1997). Bialosky is also the author of the novel House Under Snow (2002) and The Life Room (2007) and co-editor, with Helen Schulman, of the anthology Wanting A Child (1998).
Her poems and essays appear in The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review among other publications.
Bialosky has received a number of awards including the Elliot Coleman Award in Poetry. She is currently an editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 4, 2022
Fifty-four years ago on a May morning, I arrived at my high school to be waylaid by friends. They told me a boy of our acquaintance had had an “accident.” Shortly afterward, another friend told me that he was found dead the previous evening, in his family home’s garage, the car running and the doors closed.
Spring of 1968 had seen the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. And now, this boy, the step-son of my favorite teacher, a boy I admired, was dead. Add to this mix my mother’s entering the hospital, and finding her medications were harming her, she was taken off them, resulting in illness, weight loss, hair loss. Summer found me depressed.
Some years later I realized that every spring I was haunted by those deaths and near deaths. And in 1986, I wrote a poem about this boy become a ghost, “who could not rest nor resurrect,” rising each spring to “melt my fortress forgetfulness.”
such an act will always remain…up to the ones left behind to…yet the hauntings…could be prevented in the first place. XXXIII
Every April, a requiem, a re-awakening of dawn, the same chorus & players. The garage door sealed, gas turned on & the girl… XXXV
from Asylum by Jill Bialosky
Jill Bialosky’s poems deeply affected me. The loss of her younger sister to suicide permeates these poems.
“Why couldn’t I save her,” she asks in CII. As I had wondered about this boy, who would come into the school newspaper room and argue and talk with our teacher, holding his camera. He was older, smarter, outgoing. A friend asked him if he would date me, and he said he would consider it if he didn’t have a girlfriend. Could I have saved him if we were together? Two years later I had another class with his stepfather, a brilliant, progressive teacher. I could not connect the suicide with this man. I had heard that the boy and his dad argued. Could my teacher have prevented his death?
XXXII
Like just awaking
drenched, they persist,
ghosts in our poems,
ghosts in our imaginations,
ghosts in our waking hours, ghosts
who elude philosophers, poets,
scientists, psychiatrists,
therapists & doctors, ghosts
who perpetuate,
who guileless,
will not keep quiet,
who preside over the populace,
& unknowingly rob
the living, ghosts,
who made their own house
their gallows, Dante says,
will never rest.
from Asylum by Jill Bialosky
I left my ghost behind after naming it. Then, I hardly knew that boy. Bialosky lost a sister. They shared a life. Her ghost remains. “What if it is those who survive who never rest?” she asks in LXII.
Other ghosts haunt her. Those lost in the Holocaust. George Floyd. The immigrant children in pens, those seeking asylum and safety finding cages and no sanctuary. Winters become a memory. A baby dies in a fire. The virus and quarantine.
And yet life persists. Pollen thickening the air. The diseased tree cut down sends up sprouts. “things hidden from us,” to which “we mist surrender our trust, the flap of a butterfly wing, for instance, could change the balance of the universe.” (X)
IXX describes listening to a concert that included Johann Strauss II’s waltz Artist’s Life, “composed after Austria’s defeat in battle,/the melody meant to infuse breath into bleakness, elegy into declaration/creation into harmony,/even in a time of ravage & war.”
I listened to Artist’s Life, the hesitation and flowering into happiness and joy, the drama of it, the pure joy of it.
There is pain in these lines. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” stands at the gates of Dante’s hell, but could also refer to being alive. And yet…life persists, and that alone gives us hope.
I received a free book from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
Spring of 1968 had seen the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. And now, this boy, the step-son of my favorite teacher, a boy I admired, was dead. Add to this mix my mother’s entering the hospital, and finding her medications were harming her, she was taken off them, resulting in illness, weight loss, hair loss. Summer found me depressed.
Some years later I realized that every spring I was haunted by those deaths and near deaths. And in 1986, I wrote a poem about this boy become a ghost, “who could not rest nor resurrect,” rising each spring to “melt my fortress forgetfulness.”
such an act will always remain…up to the ones left behind to…yet the hauntings…could be prevented in the first place. XXXIII
Every April, a requiem, a re-awakening of dawn, the same chorus & players. The garage door sealed, gas turned on & the girl… XXXV
from Asylum by Jill Bialosky
Jill Bialosky’s poems deeply affected me. The loss of her younger sister to suicide permeates these poems.
“Why couldn’t I save her,” she asks in CII. As I had wondered about this boy, who would come into the school newspaper room and argue and talk with our teacher, holding his camera. He was older, smarter, outgoing. A friend asked him if he would date me, and he said he would consider it if he didn’t have a girlfriend. Could I have saved him if we were together? Two years later I had another class with his stepfather, a brilliant, progressive teacher. I could not connect the suicide with this man. I had heard that the boy and his dad argued. Could my teacher have prevented his death?
XXXII
Like just awaking
drenched, they persist,
ghosts in our poems,
ghosts in our imaginations,
ghosts in our waking hours, ghosts
who elude philosophers, poets,
scientists, psychiatrists,
therapists & doctors, ghosts
who perpetuate,
who guileless,
will not keep quiet,
who preside over the populace,
& unknowingly rob
the living, ghosts,
who made their own house
their gallows, Dante says,
will never rest.
from Asylum by Jill Bialosky
I left my ghost behind after naming it. Then, I hardly knew that boy. Bialosky lost a sister. They shared a life. Her ghost remains. “What if it is those who survive who never rest?” she asks in LXII.
Other ghosts haunt her. Those lost in the Holocaust. George Floyd. The immigrant children in pens, those seeking asylum and safety finding cages and no sanctuary. Winters become a memory. A baby dies in a fire. The virus and quarantine.
And yet life persists. Pollen thickening the air. The diseased tree cut down sends up sprouts. “things hidden from us,” to which “we mist surrender our trust, the flap of a butterfly wing, for instance, could change the balance of the universe.” (X)
IXX describes listening to a concert that included Johann Strauss II’s waltz Artist’s Life, “composed after Austria’s defeat in battle,/the melody meant to infuse breath into bleakness, elegy into declaration/creation into harmony,/even in a time of ravage & war.”
I listened to Artist’s Life, the hesitation and flowering into happiness and joy, the drama of it, the pure joy of it.
There is pain in these lines. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” stands at the gates of Dante’s hell, but could also refer to being alive. And yet…life persists, and that alone gives us hope.
I received a free book from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
January 28, 2021
I read Jill Bialosky's book, Poetry Will Save Your Life, a while back and was impressed with it. At that point, I don't believe I had yet been exposed to Ms. Bialosky's poetry. However, I was convinced that someone who could write so compellingly about poetry could probably also write some pretty good verse. This is, in fact, the case. Asylum is a terrific collection, and particularly moving in its treatment of the death by suicide of the poet's younger sister. Several poems in this volume touch upon the tragedy, and are among the most moving verses in the book. I also enjoyed the regular appearance of poems describing the physical, emotional, and spiritual experience of performing specific yoga poses with which I have become acquainted in my own practice.
This was a great selection for me, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity to review it thanks to the advance electronic reader copy provided by Knox Doubleday and Netgalley.com
This was a great selection for me, and I am pleased to have had the opportunity to review it thanks to the advance electronic reader copy provided by Knox Doubleday and Netgalley.com
Read
April 29, 2023“there was a brief sojourn / from the asylum in which the poem was held prisoner”
The subtitle of Jill Bialosky’s latest poetry collection prepares the reader fairly well for what follows in its pages. Bialosky’s poetry covers a range of topics, from global warming to her sister’s suicide to antisemitism, and weaves them together in a way that feels natural. From the beginning (including the cover, which portrays a cross-section of a tree trunk), the metaphor of the tree as the body is clear, and this motif creates a throughline that ties the poem’s sections together. Her writing is strongest when describing and observing the natural world, and she does so in vivid and defamiliarizing detail: “a woman / thrusting her nose into the burst / of a sunflower as if into the face / of God,” “Blossoms are at the very edge / of becoming,” “corpses / of monarchs curled in humble heads of flowers.”
But what makes her perfect for National Poetry Month is her treatment of April itself. April is the month her sister died, but it is also the month when spring begins to assert itself, and Bialosky produces poignant and brutally honest verses that examine the inherent contradiction of life and death that this month holds for her. “Every April a requiem, a re-awakening of dawn, the same chorus / & players,” she writes, going on to reference her sister’s death. She writes, in reference to both T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Dante’s “Inferno,” “Daffodils, survivors of the cruelest month / tossing their heads in sprightly dance from the ground arise.” For those who find the turn from winter into spring melancholy and bittersweet, Bialosky captures the season’s teetering between life and death in remarkable poetic verse.
Daily Arts Writer Emilia Ferrante can be reached at emiliajf@umich.edu.
https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/bo...
The subtitle of Jill Bialosky’s latest poetry collection prepares the reader fairly well for what follows in its pages. Bialosky’s poetry covers a range of topics, from global warming to her sister’s suicide to antisemitism, and weaves them together in a way that feels natural. From the beginning (including the cover, which portrays a cross-section of a tree trunk), the metaphor of the tree as the body is clear, and this motif creates a throughline that ties the poem’s sections together. Her writing is strongest when describing and observing the natural world, and she does so in vivid and defamiliarizing detail: “a woman / thrusting her nose into the burst / of a sunflower as if into the face / of God,” “Blossoms are at the very edge / of becoming,” “corpses / of monarchs curled in humble heads of flowers.”
But what makes her perfect for National Poetry Month is her treatment of April itself. April is the month her sister died, but it is also the month when spring begins to assert itself, and Bialosky produces poignant and brutally honest verses that examine the inherent contradiction of life and death that this month holds for her. “Every April a requiem, a re-awakening of dawn, the same chorus / & players,” she writes, going on to reference her sister’s death. She writes, in reference to both T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Dante’s “Inferno,” “Daffodils, survivors of the cruelest month / tossing their heads in sprightly dance from the ground arise.” For those who find the turn from winter into spring melancholy and bittersweet, Bialosky captures the season’s teetering between life and death in remarkable poetic verse.
Daily Arts Writer Emilia Ferrante can be reached at emiliajf@umich.edu.
https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/bo...
February 2, 2025
This is a curious one. There are poems in here I absolutely loved but also some that felt incomplete, added as filler, or antithetical to the section in which they were included, which is my biggest issue here - for every fantastic poem, there is one that could have been cut (or, at least, heavily-edited) and the collection better for it.
The best example is the last section, part V. We ricochet between poems about nature, the holocaust, and weird pseudo-ramblings about a yoga teacher. The quality of these pieces vary regardless, but together they form a strange, disjointed conclusion that feels more like the author simply shoved pieces that were either incomplete or did not fit anywhere else in the book.
Although some of the poems in this book genuinely resonated with me, I can't imagine I'll ever feel the need to revisit them. Unfortunately, the good offered here is bogged down by the mediocre and downright bad.
The best example is the last section, part V. We ricochet between poems about nature, the holocaust, and weird pseudo-ramblings about a yoga teacher. The quality of these pieces vary regardless, but together they form a strange, disjointed conclusion that feels more like the author simply shoved pieces that were either incomplete or did not fit anywhere else in the book.
Although some of the poems in this book genuinely resonated with me, I can't imagine I'll ever feel the need to revisit them. Unfortunately, the good offered here is bogged down by the mediocre and downright bad.
December 13, 2020
Gorgeous, stunning collection of poetry will leave you breathless. And then you'll want to go back and read it all over again.
I read E V E R Y word of this collection--from the dedication to the author's notes, the back jacket reviews--EVERYTHING! It's sort of amazing. I am in awe. Even the table of contents reads like a story, a piece of prose poetry that seems to have greater meaning. To go into detail on every poem in this collection would be a disservice to the reader; it must be experienced individually. But let's just say, it's A M A Z I N G.
Here's what else you need to know: it's urgent and terrifying. There are contemporary-type issues and more historical ones, too. Or rather, those historical ones inform the contemporary ones. There's heartache and grief, sorting through feelings, it's about trauma and nature and understanding, but it's also about survival, sustenance, and hope. It's about the writer's 'call' and the oppositions that pull us. Here, too, is always with poetry, a gentle exploration of language, which I love--the peaks and valleys.
You might also like the work of Molly Spencer in IF THE HOUSE andHINGE. The author has written other books, too, including literary fiction and memoir, which I have not experienced, but just might.
For all my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com|Always with a Book.
I read E V E R Y word of this collection--from the dedication to the author's notes, the back jacket reviews--EVERYTHING! It's sort of amazing. I am in awe. Even the table of contents reads like a story, a piece of prose poetry that seems to have greater meaning. To go into detail on every poem in this collection would be a disservice to the reader; it must be experienced individually. But let's just say, it's A M A Z I N G.
Here's what else you need to know: it's urgent and terrifying. There are contemporary-type issues and more historical ones, too. Or rather, those historical ones inform the contemporary ones. There's heartache and grief, sorting through feelings, it's about trauma and nature and understanding, but it's also about survival, sustenance, and hope. It's about the writer's 'call' and the oppositions that pull us. Here, too, is always with poetry, a gentle exploration of language, which I love--the peaks and valleys.
You might also like the work of Molly Spencer in IF THE HOUSE andHINGE. The author has written other books, too, including literary fiction and memoir, which I have not experienced, but just might.
For all my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com|Always with a Book.
January 9, 2021
[rating = B-]
At first, I thought this book must be about an insane asylum, how the patients are treated/abused. However, this book centers around the poet herself and her struggle to overcome her grief, which has put her in a "mental asylum" (if you get what I mean, an internal one). The grief is about the death of her sister, a suicide by leaving the car on in a closed garage. And Bialosky traces the journey well as the text progresses.
However, I think she should have been more direct in the beginning. I thought the first twenty poems or so had a different tone and were really used to build-up to the tragedy, with naming the incident. With that, these poems are better read as one big grouping rather than individual poems. Yes, some can stand on their own, but they get their power from the entire context and the sorrow evoked.
She has some interesting correlations with trees and with illness and this plays nicely as the sections continue. She also invokes Dante and the ideas around the "badness" of suicide. Though she is Jewish (and so the sister cannot be given a proper burial), this Jewishness is explored as a root, a branch that really doesn't go anywhere. Some may disagree, but I didn't find the poems about WWII as powerful as some other writers who focus on it a bit more, instead of merely being another facet of Identity. If the Jewishness had more of a role, a cost directly related to the suicide (than just the usual bullying, which, of course, is never justified), I think the link would have been that much more puissant.
In all, I enjoyed this collection and I will definitely go back to several of the poems in it.
At first, I thought this book must be about an insane asylum, how the patients are treated/abused. However, this book centers around the poet herself and her struggle to overcome her grief, which has put her in a "mental asylum" (if you get what I mean, an internal one). The grief is about the death of her sister, a suicide by leaving the car on in a closed garage. And Bialosky traces the journey well as the text progresses.
However, I think she should have been more direct in the beginning. I thought the first twenty poems or so had a different tone and were really used to build-up to the tragedy, with naming the incident. With that, these poems are better read as one big grouping rather than individual poems. Yes, some can stand on their own, but they get their power from the entire context and the sorrow evoked.
She has some interesting correlations with trees and with illness and this plays nicely as the sections continue. She also invokes Dante and the ideas around the "badness" of suicide. Though she is Jewish (and so the sister cannot be given a proper burial), this Jewishness is explored as a root, a branch that really doesn't go anywhere. Some may disagree, but I didn't find the poems about WWII as powerful as some other writers who focus on it a bit more, instead of merely being another facet of Identity. If the Jewishness had more of a role, a cost directly related to the suicide (than just the usual bullying, which, of course, is never justified), I think the link would have been that much more puissant.
In all, I enjoyed this collection and I will definitely go back to several of the poems in it.
August 16, 2020
This is an epic collection
The collected elements this renowned poet has included here become for me her pain and agony expressed as she searches for answers after her sister's suicide, her search for acceptance, answers to her disbelief as if she creates a canvas painted in blood, dirt, leaves, tears, fog, sky, historical accounts of great suffering and recent horrific events depicting a visual form in her reach for asylum. It is a book of such force from the ugly to the sublime. I recommend this book to all who will read and reread passages, sometimes out loud to savor their strength, rhythm and true purpose in appearing in print to form this work.
The collected elements this renowned poet has included here become for me her pain and agony expressed as she searches for answers after her sister's suicide, her search for acceptance, answers to her disbelief as if she creates a canvas painted in blood, dirt, leaves, tears, fog, sky, historical accounts of great suffering and recent horrific events depicting a visual form in her reach for asylum. It is a book of such force from the ugly to the sublime. I recommend this book to all who will read and reread passages, sometimes out loud to savor their strength, rhythm and true purpose in appearing in print to form this work.
January 3, 2021
Asylum is a poetry collection that gives us something much more: it's the deeply emotional, introspective autobiography of the poet's life told in poems that even a reader who is not a fan of poetry will immediately love, appreciate, and relate. The thread of this moving collection is about Nature and how she guides us through the thick and thin of it all. I savored every verse word-for-word and yet devoured it in only a few hours. It's not only the words but just the entire layout and presentation of this book was so stunning and detailed, that even that blew me away. Every little thing about Asylum was wonderful, that we should all be honored that we can have it in our hands.
January 9, 2023
This is what poetry should be. As someone who is deeply invested into learning more about the mental health space, Jill's words surrounding her experience with her sibling's suicide moved me. What happens after someone you love is gone? This collection explores the "after" and how our lives fit into the environment around us. Not only was this easy to read, but it was easy to understand and easy to resonate with. For that reason, I would recommend it to a friend and anyone who wants to start reading poetry!
July 12, 2020
A beautiful poetry collection that touches on many many topics, ones related to the poet and to the human experience at large. At the end, there are references for further reading on the facts behind poems based on specific global events.
Thanks to Jill Bialosky and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my truthful opinion!
Thanks to Jill Bialosky and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my truthful opinion!
September 24, 2020
This book is a marvel. I opened it on a flight, read it cover to cover, and then proceeded to go immediately back to the beginning. This collection will go in my pile with Oliver and Laux and Rankine.... all poets I turn to when I am feeling overwhelmed by what it means to be a human in this broken world.
July 20, 2022
Her descriptions of nature are unparalleled and some of it really spoke to me, but I did feel that some of the sections and poems felt disconnected from the rest and at some points out of touch, like the parts with the yoga teacher.
April 24, 2024
Thank you to the publisher for sending me a finished copy to review
If you took the nature poetry from Mary Oliver and combined it with the heartbreak of Sylvia Plath and mixed it together with the pov from a modern Jewish woman, this is the book you’d get.
I loved it.
If you took the nature poetry from Mary Oliver and combined it with the heartbreak of Sylvia Plath and mixed it together with the pov from a modern Jewish woman, this is the book you’d get.
I loved it.
September 16, 2025
XXXV "Every April a requiem, a re-awakening of dawn, the same chorus and players."
XXXVIII "Because..."
LXII "What if it is those who survive who never rest?"
LXV " Because the only way to make it quiet..."
XXXVIII "Because..."
LXII "What if it is those who survive who never rest?"
LXV " Because the only way to make it quiet..."
June 24, 2021
A gorgeous mediation on life and nature that speaks so beautifully to the world we are living in now.
June 23, 2022
Good concept but I didn’t really get it ahhhh I’m sorry!
August 11, 2022
Stunning. Go get this one.
October 14, 2025
Now, I know that in a poetry book, you won't love all the poems, but I expected to love at least one.
October 22, 2020
This book has some very interesting things to say through poetry. It's a really interesting mix of the poet's personal tragedies mixed with those of others, as well as a larger connection to collective memory and inherited trauma and sometimes the tiny lights of hope in that dark. I love the way she mixes nature imagery with human storytelling, and how she switches between nature and civilization. It almost feels like it mirrors an epic poem. Also, I really enjoyed the Bialosky's use of dual/multiple meanings of words (as in bodies for both water and people, or the multiple meanings of asylum).
I'd recommend this for anyone who is interested in nature poetry, personal histories and language with the caveat that the subject matter is heavy and includes infant mortality, suicide and the holocaust.
FTC disclosure: I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
I'd recommend this for anyone who is interested in nature poetry, personal histories and language with the caveat that the subject matter is heavy and includes infant mortality, suicide and the holocaust.
FTC disclosure: I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
February 1, 2023
Keeping on my promise to read more poetry, I was delighted to get a copy of "Asylum" by Jill Bialosky.
This was definitely a more challenging read for me given the heavy topic of loss, especially as of late. However, at the same time felt like a very cathartic experience for me. "Asylum" feels like it should be read in the post pandemic world (also explored within the pages) by everyone.
The writing is beautiful, and touches on many current topics that we are all swimming in on a daily basis, locally and globally.. Personally, this helped a lot to have them put to paper in this way.
I encourage you to step out of your typical book habits and give this a read. For me, the tackling of uncomfortable topics in books often give the most comfort and help to make sense of the world.
This was definitely a more challenging read for me given the heavy topic of loss, especially as of late. However, at the same time felt like a very cathartic experience for me. "Asylum" feels like it should be read in the post pandemic world (also explored within the pages) by everyone.
The writing is beautiful, and touches on many current topics that we are all swimming in on a daily basis, locally and globally.. Personally, this helped a lot to have them put to paper in this way.
I encourage you to step out of your typical book habits and give this a read. For me, the tackling of uncomfortable topics in books often give the most comfort and help to make sense of the world.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews