Asylum

Goodreads Description

Barry James is detained in a quarantine facility in the blistering heat of the Great Karoo. Here he exists in two worlds: the discordant and unforgiving reality of his incarceration and the lyrical, snowy landscapes of his dreams. He has cut all ties with his previous life, his health is failing, and he has given up all hope. All he has to cling to are the meanderings of his restless mind, the daily round of pills and the journals he reluctantly keeps as testimony to a life once lived. And then there’s an opportunity to escape. But to escape what? And where to? Can there be a life to go back to? Is there still a world out there in the barren wasteland beyond the fence? "I was sitting in the train looking out at the falling snow. I knew then that I was not going home … I was going to an unknown place on a train full of unknown people. And even though I knew I would not be coming back, that the factories that whooshed by were instantly hundreds of kilometres behind us, that the train would not deliver us anywhere where we’d want to be, I still felt grateful for the snow, the impossible snow. For it seems to me that even in the most bleak of worlds we’ll find something to hold on to … even if that is something as impossible as snow in this god-forsaken wasteland."

My Review

The entire time that I was reading this novel I kept thinking about the review I was going to write. During my reading of this book I was unsure how I felt about it, and I'm still slightly unsure now. It had its moments, but overall, I'm feeling a little underwhelmed.

I was really excited to read a thriller by a new South African author. As most of you know, not only am I a huge fan of thrillers but I'm also South African, and so this book ticked my initial boxes. I'm all behind supporting local talent, and so if I could read this book and give the author and his book some publicity in the process, then great, I was all for it. For these reasons I really wanted to love this one. I wanted to finish this book and shout its praises from the rooftops. Unfortunately, on turning the final page, I just didn't feel very passionate about it and so I won't be doing much singing.

For me, there just wasn't enough action and suspense in this novel to label it a true thriller. None of the characters specifically shone or stood out and in fact, I found them a little dull. At one stage during my reading of the book, I actually stopped (this was at about 60% of the way through) and asked myself, so what has actually happened in this book so far? Unfortunately, the answer to that question was, not much. It was very slow going at times and genuinely, not a lot happens. The main character Barry has been detained in a quarantine facility, he's been seeing a psychologist that he quite likes and he's planning his escape from the facility. Genuinely, that's the full extent of the story at three quarters of the way through the book. Yes, of course there's a little more to the story than that, but really, it just amounted to fluff and didn't really add to the "thriller" aspect.

The truth of the matter is that the pace does improve in the last third of the book but it was all a little too late for me. By that stage I had pretty much decided that this was a very average read. On turning the last page, I was also left with the overwhelming sensation that I had missed something, that I hadn't fully understood this story. And I think that's true. Talk about an unreliable narrator! I didn't know when he was telling the truth, when he was concocting things, when he was dreaming, whether the people he talks about actually existed at all or whether he was just losing his mind. I was just confused. And that's strange for me because normally I love books that are a bit weird, a bit off the wall. But this one just didn't do it for me. I'm sad about that, but I need to be honest and that's my honest opinion.

The thing about reading and about reviewing books in general is this: every book has a reader somewhere that loves it. This is a fact that I've learnt over many years and after reading hundreds upon hundreds of books. I can thus sign off by saying that this book didn't blow me away. It wasn't to my taste. Does that mean that you will feel the same way? Absolutely not. As always then, let me leave you with this - if the blurb appeals to you, then give this one a go. And if you're South African and you can support local talent in the process, then fantastic.

My Rating: * *

Publication Date: April 2017 (South Africa)

Genre: Literary Fiction / Existential Thriller

Format: Trade Paperback

Source: Review copy received from the publisher. Many thanks to author Marcus Low and Pan Macmillan SA for my copy.