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Narrated by Rosalyn Landor
John HarwoodUnabridged — 10 hours, 15 minutes
Narrated by Rosalyn Landor
John HarwoodUnabridged — 10 hours, 15 minutes
A brilliant new Gothic thriller from the acclaimed author of The Ghost Writer and The Séance
Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before and then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London: “Your patient must be an imposter.”
Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary. Who is the woman in her uncle's house? And what has become of her two most precious possessions, a dragonfly pin left to her by her mother and a journal that contains the only record of those missing weeks? Georgina's perilous quest to free herself takes her from a cliffside cottage on the Isle of Wight to the secret passages of Tregannon House and into a web of hidden family ties on which her survival depends.
Here is another delicious read from the author praised by Ruth Rendell as having “a gift for creating suspense, apparently effortlessly, as if it belongs in the nature of fiction.”
Working with a plot drawn from Wilkie Collins's Woman in White, Harwood puts together a deliciously spooky pastiche of the high and low Gothic traditions and the tender heroines who live and die by them.
09/02/2013
Rosalyn Landor proves a fine choice to narrate this Gothic tale of mystery, mistaken identity, and madness. Georgina Ferrars awakens to find herself in a private asylum called Tregannon House. With no memory of the past several days, Georgina learns that she checked herself into the facility under the name Lucy Ashton. What follows is a suspenseful story of dark intrigue, as Georgina struggles to convince her captors of her true identity, even as mounting evidence begins to shake her belief in her own sanity. Landor’s clear, accented reading pulls the listener into the sinister halls of Tregannon, and her first-person narration perfectly conveys the heroine’s sense of confusion and growing desperation. With her crisp, straightforward delivery, Landor keeps the listener enthralled as one clue after another is revealed, leading to a climax that is as satisfying as it is surprising. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover. (May)
As he did in The Ghost Writer and The Séance, Australian author Harwood evokes Charles Palliser and Louis Bayard in his engrossing third stand-alone Victorian thriller. In the first sentence, Georgina Ferrars declares, “I woke, as it seemed, from a nightmare of being stretched on the rack, only to sink into another dream in which I was lying on a strange bed, afraid to open my eyes for fear of what I might see.” Alas, Georgina finds herself in a Cornwall asylum, whose sinister director, Dr. Maynard Straker, tells her that she arrived the previous day, November 1, 1882, and identified herself as 21-year-old Lucy Ashton. With no memory of the previous six weeks, Georgina is hard-pressed to refute Straker. Only gradually do the events that led to her confinement become clear. The crisp prose and twisty plot will encourage many to read this in one sitting, though the ending won’t satisfy everyone. Agent: Kathleen Anderson, Anderson Literary Management. (May)
"The woman who awakens from a long sleep to find herself in a mental asylum in Cornwall knows herself to be Georgina Ferrars, an unmarried woman who lives with her uncle, a bookseller in the Bloomsbury section of London. But the head of the asylum swears she presented herself as Lucy Ashton (after the tragic heroine of Sir Walter Scott’s feverish novel, "The Bride of Lammermoor"), and the uncle in London insists that his niece, Georgina, is at that moment under his roof. Working with a plot drawn from Wilkie Collins’s "Woman in White," Harwood puts together a deliciously spooky pastiche of the high and low Gothic traditions and the tender heroines who live and die by them." — New York Times Book Review "Author of The Seance and The Ghost Writer, Harwood, master of creeping Victorian horror, does it again in his latest tale of pervasive evil and madness. . . Twisted in every sense of the word and wonderfully atmospheric, this dark psychological tale shocks by degree until truth of a sort is revealed."—Booklist "Harwood evokes Charles Palliser and Louis Bayard in his engrossing third stand-alone Victorian thriller. . . .. The crisp prose and twisty plot will encourage many to read this in one sitting."—Publishers Weekly "There are mirrors here, an insane asylum, and enough startling coincidences to make you think Harwood was actually writing this in late Victorian England, where the novel is set. There are even a dark, brooding hero and a diabolical villain, assuming they are who they appear to be. . . . The Asylum is as dark and suspenseful as any good Gothic romance." — Australian Book Review —
10/15/2013
Georgina Ferrars discovers that she's locked in a Victorian asylum. She's lost some of her memory, and what she has left does not seem to match the reality outside the asylum. She must learn who she truly is, and find out who—or what—is responsible for her current situation. Harwood's (The Seance) writing seems designed to emulate books of the era, which is both a strength and a weakness. While the vocabulary and tone make the story feel more authentic, the writing seems to replicate different authors' styles. This makes it feel as though a completely different story is taking place at various points, which is especially off-putting at the climax. The Victorian prose also makes topics more freely discussed in the modern era, such as the lead character's lesbianism, feminism, and atheism, stand out. Rosalyn Landor's excellent pronunciation and diction can work against her, as the reading tends to become staccato and hard on the ear over time. In spite of these drawbacks, the well-crafted mystery keeps drawing in the listener. VERDICT For readers who like Shirley Jackson-style slow-burn horror and historical fiction lovers who can deal with the heroine's modern sensibilities. ["Harwood focuses on creating a suitably chilling atmosphere and an appealing, if helpless, heroine, but the cardboard villains are obvious and uninspired. The middle section of the novel, in epistolary style, is far more compelling than the straightforward narrative," read the review of the Houghton Harcourt hc, LJ 4/15/13.]—Tristan M. Boyd, Westbank Community Lib., Austin, TX
Creepy doings--certificates of insanity, switched identities, morbid personalities--in and around an asylum in 19th-century England. While it's not exactly clear why the Victorian period is so amenable to such sinister and disturbing phenomena, Harwood certainly makes the atmosphere work here. In 1882, a young woman wakes up at Tregannon House, a former mansion in Cornwall, now turned into an insane asylum run by Dr. Straker and his gruesomely unwholesome assistant, Frederic Mordaunt. Although the day before she had introduced herself as Lucy Ashton, later that night she is found unconscious, and when she emerges from a nightmare the following morning, she's convinced her name is Georgina Ferrars and that she lives with her uncle in London. When Dr. Straker goes to London to sort out the confusion with Ferrars' (or is it Ashton's?) identity, he comes back to Tregannon House with the disturbing report that she must be an imposter, for he met the "real" Georgina Ferrars at her uncle's. Disturbingly, the more the Georgina in the asylum tries to assert her identity, the more the authority figures are persuaded she's delusional, so she's committed to the involuntary wing of the asylum, where she's convinced the only way for her to reclaim her identity is to escape. Also upsetting is that she begins to have flashbacks to childhood memories in which she had an imaginary friend/alter ego named Rosina. We're then taken back to a series of letters from Rosina Wentworth to Emily Ferrars about 20 years previously--and eventually to a journal written by Georgina Ferrars. Rosina breathlessly reports to her cousin all the latest gossip, dwelling especially on her own romantic entanglements with Felix Mordaunt, owner of a mansion in Cornwall. Once again, identities shift. While the Gothicism works well, at times Harwood's convolutions become as mystifying to the reader as to the characters he depicts.
| BN ID: | 2940169899474 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/21/2013 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
CHAPTER 1
Georgina Ferrars' Narrative
I woke, as it seemed, from a nightmare of being stretched on the rack, only to sink into another dream in which I was lying in a strange bed, afraid to open my eyes for fear of what I might see. The smell and the texture of the blanket against my cheek felt wrong, and I was clad, I became aware, in a coarse flannel nightgown that was certainly not my own. I knew that I must still be dreaming, for I had gone to sleep as usual in my bedroom at home. Every joint in my body ached as if I had been stricken with fever; yet I had felt perfectly well the night before.
I lay still for a little, waiting for the dream to dissolve, until my eyes opened of their own accord. The ceiling above me was a dull white; the bare walls, a dismal shade of green. Grey light filtered through a metal grille; the glass behind it was clouded and streaked with moisture.
I sat up, wincing at the pain, to find myself in what appeared to be a prison cell. The door to my left was solid oak, with a narrow aperture at eye level, closed by a wooden shutter. The air was damp and chill, and smelt of cold ashes and chloride of lime. A small fireplace was, like the window, entirely covered by a stout metal grille. There was no furniture beyond a bedside table, a single upright chair, a washstand, and a small closet; there were no ornaments, no looking glass; not so much as a candlestick.
It was impossible; I could not be here. But neither could I deny that I was wide awake. And I was not, I realised, at all feverish; my forehead was cool, my skin was dry, and my breath came freely. So why did my body protest at the slightest movement? Had I fallen somehow? or been attacked? — or worse? Trembling, I threw off the bedclothes and examined myself, but I could find no trace of injury, except for some bruises on my upper arms, as if someone had gripped them tightly.
Was it some sort of hallucination? If I lie down, I thought, and pull the covers over my head and try to go to sleep again, perhaps I will find myself back in my own bed. But my feet, seemingly of their own volition, were already on the floor. I moved unsteadily to the door and tried the handle, but it would not budge.
Should I call out? And who would come if I did? I turned toward the window, wondering if this was what sleepwalkers experienced. Half a dozen paces brought me to the grille. The world beyond was obscured by grey, swirling mist, with faint, unidentifiable forms — walls? houses? trees? — hovering at the edge of visibility.
I returned to the door and tried the handle again. This time the panel shot open, and two eyes appeared in the slot.
"Where am I?" I cried.
"The infirmary, miss," replied a young woman's voice. "Please, miss, I'm to say you're to get back into bed, and the doctor will be here directly."
The panel slid shut, and I heard the muffled sound of footsteps receding. Shivering, I did as she had asked, relieved at least to discover that I was in a hospital. But what had happened to me, and why had they locked me in? I waited apprehensively until another, heavier tread approached. A lock rasped, the door swung inward, and a man stepped into the room. From his dress — a tweed suit and waistcoat, somewhat rumpled, a white collar which had sprung loose at one side, a tie of dark blue silk, carelessly knotted — and a certain humorous glint in his eye, you might have taken him for an artist, but there was an air of authority about him, of a man accustomed to being obeyed. He looked somewhere between forty and fifty, not especially tall, but broad-shouldered and trim. His eyes were pale blue, accentuating the blackness of the pupils, deep-set and piercing beneath heavy brows, with dark pouches beneath; his nose strong and aquiline and straight as a blade, the nostrils flared above chiselled lips. A long, lean face, clean-shaven except for a fringe of side-whiskers, tapering down to a creased, prominent chin. He stood silent, surveying me appraisingly.
"Where am I?" I said again. "Who are you? Why am I here?"
A gleam of satisfaction showed in his eyes.
"Do you mean you don't know? — I see you do not. This is most inter — that is to say, most distressing for you. Forgive me: my name is Maynard Straker, and I am the superintendent and chief medical officer here at Tregannon House — on Bodmin Moor, in Cornwall," he added, seeing that my bewilderment had not lessened. "Have no fear, Miss Ashton, I am entirely at your ser —"
He stopped short at the expression on my face.
"Sir, my name is not Ashton! I am Miss Ferrars, Georgina Ferrars; I live in London, with my uncle; there has been a terrible mistake."
"I see," he said calmly. "Well, never fear. Let me order you some toast and tea, and we shall talk it all through in comfort."
"But sir, I should not be here! Please, I wish to go home at once!"
"All in good time, Miss — Ferrars, if you prefer. The first thing you must understand is that you have been very ill. I know" — he held up his hand to silence me — "I know you do not remember: that is a consequence of your illness. Now please; first you must allow me to examine you, and then I shall explain what has happened to you."
Such was the force of his personality that I waited in silence whilst he murmured instructions to someone outside the door. He took my pulse, listened to my heartbeat, tested my reflexes, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Then he settled himself on the wooden chair so that he was facing me directly.
"You arrived here yesterday morning; without notice, which is most unusual. You gave your name as Lucy Ashton and said that you wished to consult me on an urgent and confidential matter. As I was away on business, the maid referred you to my assistant, Mr. Mordaunt. You were, he says, in an agitated state, though striving to conceal your distress. He explained that I would not be back until the evening, and that you would therefore have to stay here overnight, and register as a voluntary patient in order to see me, and to this you very reluctantly agreed. You would not admit to any disturbance of mind; only to extreme fatigue, and, after giving him a few cursory details, asked if you might complete the admission forms later.
"Mr. Mordaunt found you a room in the voluntary wing and left you there, assuming you would rest. But several times that afternoon he saw you walking about the grounds in what he described — my assistant is something of a poet — as a trance of desolation.
"I returned at about nine o'clock, and, upon hearing Mr. Mordaunt's account of you, called briefly at your room to arrange an appointment for this morning; I had too many calls upon my time to speak to you last night. You were plainly in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion, but again you refused to concede anything beyond fatigue. I naturally ordered you a sedative, which you promised to take, though I fear you did not. Voluntary patients are, I should say, under no compulsion to accept any particular treatment here. So long as they pose no danger to themselves or others, they are free to do as they wish: it is part of our philosophy.
"Early this morning you were found unconscious on the path behind this building; you must have slipped out without anyone noticing. It was evident to me that you had suffered a seizure, which, though rare, is not unheard of in cases such as yours, where extreme mental agitation induces something like an epileptic fit, or, in those actually prone to epilepsy, a grand mal episode. It is nature's way of discharging excessive mental energy. Upon waking, the patient commonly remembers nothing of the preceding days, or even weeks, and is at a loss to account for the extreme soreness of joints and muscles, which is due to the violence of the spasms. Such episodes are, of course, more common in women, whose faculties are more delicate, and more readily overstrained, than those of men —"
"Sir," I broke in, as the full horror of realisation dawned, "am I in a madhouse?"
"It is not a term I favour; say rather you are in the care of a private establishment for the cure of diseases of the mind. An enlightened institution, Miss — Ferrars, run on the most humane principles, dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the comfort of our patients.
"Now, you assured me at our first interview that you had never suffered from epilepsy, or any form of mental disturbance — but I take it you cannot recall that interview?"
"No, sir."
"And you have no idea of how, or why, you presented yourself to us as Lucy Ashton?"
"None whatever, sir."
"What is the last thing — the very last thing — you can recall?"
I had clung, throughout his recital, to the belief that this was all a ghastly mistake, and that I should be escorted home to London as soon as I could persuade him that I was Georgina Ferrars and not Lucy Ashton. But his question provoked a sort of landslip in my mind. My memory, as it had seemed, of going to bed at home the night before, wavered and collapsed, leaving only a dreadful, buzzing confusion. I must, I thought desperately, must be able to remember. If not last night, then the day before? Memories — if they were memories — spilled from my grasp like playing cards, even as I tried to order them. I saw my life dissolving before my eyes. The room swayed like the deck of a ship; for a moment I felt sure I should faint.
Dr. Straker regarded me calmly.
"Do not be alarmed; the confusion will pass. But you see now why I hesitate to address you as Miss Ferrars. It is possible — I have seen such cases — that you are in fact Lucy Ashton; that Miss Ferrars — Georgina, did you say? — that Georgina Ferrars is your friend or relation, or even just a figment of your disordered imagination. The mind, after an insult such as this, can play the most extraordinary tricks upon us."
"But sir, I am Georgina Ferrars! You must believe me! I live in Gresham's Yard, in Bloomsbury, with my uncle, Josiah Radford, the bookseller. You must wire to tell him I am here —"
Dr. Straker held up his hand to stop the rush of words.
"Steady, steady, Miss ... Ferrars, let us say. Of course we shall wire. But before we do so, you should at least consider the evidence of your own possessions ... Ah, here is tea."
A young maidservant in a neat grey uniform entered with a tray.
"You will be pleased to see, Bella, that our patient is recovering," said Dr. Straker.
"Yes indeed, sir," she said. "Very glad to see you looking better, Miss Ashton. Will there be anything else, sir?"
"Yes; run down to Miss Ashton's room, and bring all of her things up here. Ask one of the porters if you need assistance. We can manage the tea."
"Yes sir; right away, sir."
"You see?" said Dr. Straker wryly as she hurried out. "Miss Ashton is, at least, not just a figment of my imagination. Milk? Sugar?"
If Dr. Straker had betrayed the slightest anxiety on my behalf, I think I should have given way to hysteria. But his nonchalance had a strangely calming, or rather numbing, effect upon me. I had come here calling myself Lucy Ashton: so much seemed undeniable, though utterly incomprehensible. I felt certain I knew no one of that name, and yet it seemed vaguely familiar. He has promised to wire, I told myself. I shall be going home soon, and must cling to that thought. I sipped my tea mechanically, grateful for the warmth of the cup in my cold hands.
My mother's birthday! It had been a warm autumn day.
"Sir, I have remembered something," I said. "The twenty-third of September, my mother's birthday — she died ten years ago, but I vowed I would always do something that we should have enjoyed together. It was a Saturday, and I walked up to Regent's Park, and ate an ice, and felt very ill afterward."
"I see ... and after that?"
I strove to pick up the thread, but beyond that one glimpse, I could not be sure. I could go backward with some confidence, over the events of the summer, and the spring, and indeed all the way back to my childhood — or so it seemed — but when I tried to advance, I could summon only blurred images of myself in my uncle's house; the power of ordering them seemed to have deserted me.
"I — I cannot be sure," I said at last.
"Most interesting. Let us say, then, that your last clear recollection is — or appears to be — of the twenty-third of September. Would you care to hazard a guess at today's date?"
I knew then what had been troubling me about the chill, the damp, even the quality of the light.
"I cannot guess the time, sir, let alone the date."
"It is two o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday, the second of November. In the year of our Lord 1882," he added, raising one eyebrow.
"November!" I exclaimed. "Where have I ... How could I have ... Sir, you must wire my uncle at once; he will be desperately worried."
"Not necessarily. If a Georgina Ferrars had been missing for the past week, let alone the past month, we should have been informed. Asylums, like the hospitals and the police, are kept up to date with news of missing persons; and there is no one of that name — indeed, no one resembling you — on any of our lists. You may have told your uncle that you were going away; though not, presumably, to a lunatic asylum under a false name. So before we trouble him, let us try to set the record straight."
He drew a piece of paper from his coat pocket.
"This is all the information you gave my assistant when he admitted you yesterday morning. 'Name: Lucy Ashton. Address: Royal Hotel, Plymouth. Date of birth: the fourteenth of February 1861. Place of birth: London. Parents: deceased. Next of kin: none living. No history of serious physical or mental illness. No person to be advised in case of illness or decease. "Patient says she is quite alone in the world,"' Mr. Mordaunt has noted. Interesting, is it not?"
"Sir, I have never even been to Plymouth!"
"I think we can safely say that you have. Amnesia is the most difficult of all conditions for a patient to grasp, Miss Ashton, because there is literally nothing to hold on to. You do not recognise any of those details, then?"
"None, sir. I cannot imagine why —"
"I can think of at least two explanations," he said, producing a notebook and pencil.
"But before we come to that ... Your full name?"
"Georgina May Ferrars, sir."
"And your date and place of birth?"
"March third, 1861, at Nettleford, in Devon."
"That is near Plymouth, is it not?"
"I believe so, sir; I have no memory of it. We — my mother and I — moved to a cottage on the cliffs near Niton, on the Isle of Wight, to live with my aunt Vida — my great-aunt, I mean — when I was only an infant."
He listened to this halting explanation with an air of polite amusement, as if to say, And why should we believe you this time?
"I see ... And your father?"
"His name was Godfrey Ferrars, sir; I never knew him. He died before I was two years old."
"I am sorry to hear it. What was his profession, do you know?"
"He was a doctor, sir —" I almost said, "like yourself," but checked myself. "A medical officer, in London."
"What part of London?"
"Clerkenwell, sir. But he became very ill and had to move to the country; he was convalescing in Nettleford when I was born."
"And did not recover, I take it?"
"He did recover, sir, but then he insisted on taking another situation, in Southwark —"
"Again as a medical officer?"
"Yes, sir. My mother took me to Niton — we were to follow as soon as he had settled in — but he came down with typhoid fever and was dead before news of his illness reached us."
"Do you know the date?"
"No, sir; only that it was summer."
"Well, let us say the summer of 1862." He scribbled in his notebook. "And your mother's maiden name?"
"Emily Radford."
"She died, I think you said, ten years ago?"
"Yes, sir. She had some weakness of the heart — an aneurism, we were told. It was not discovered until after her death."
"A melancholy history. Are you her only child?"
"Yes, sir."
Dr. Straker regarded me curiously.
"Do you know, I wonder, whether the weakness was hereditary? Your own heart seems sound enough, on a brief examination, but have you ever suffered from palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, fainting fits ...?"
"No, sir, I was a very healthy child. She and my aunt were always anxious that I should take plenty of rest and exercise, and not become over-excited, but they never mentioned my heart."
"That, at least, is reassuring," he said, making another note. "And after that?"
"I remained with my great-aunt, Vida Radford, on my mother's side, until we lost — until she died last year. After that I went to London to live with Uncle Josiah — Aunt Vida's brother, so he is my great-uncle, too —"
Again I heard myself faltering.
"And has your uncle any children of his own?"
"No, sir. Like my aunt, he never married."
"I see. And — if you will forgive me — what are your financial circumstances? Have you money of your own, or expectations of your uncle?" Something in his tone made me even more fearful.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Asylum"
by .
Copyright © 2013 John Harwood.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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