Terrific novel! So wonderfully imaginative and inventive. And of course the style is a constant pleasure. One is drawn into the depths. Treblinka! And the psychological Treblinkas. I can see how hard, even obsessively, you must have worked on it over many years. Congratulations again on Asylum. A remarkable achievement. D.M.Thomas
Set in 18th Century Wales and a present-day town on England’s South coast, two women connect over time, struggle with their demons, act out their suppressed lives, battle with their fathers, lovers, their sexuality. Darkly humorous, the narrative takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the human psyche, into inner and outer landscapes, where a cast of colourful characters pay court, assist, resist and observe the women’s excesses, theatrical and mundane. The narrative weaves in and out of war-zones, feuds, social mores. Mariamne lives again through Hester, who finally lays her ghost to rest.
Hester Lucas (1942 – 2002) discovers Mariamne Johnes (1784 – 1811) and becomes obsessed with her, discovers and invents, brings Mariamne back to life. Both women leave traces. From these fragments – voices speaking, calling down a staircase, out of a photograph, from the earth itself – stories and events are spun – discovered or invented. This is echoed in the novel’s structure. As the facets of a crystal together make the whole, this story lies beyond its traces, perhaps the more haunting for that. Venturing into the hidden lives of both women and their oppressive origins, fragments of other excavations are evoked, the shadows of Kazamiertz and Treblinka, as Hester finally lays Mariamne to rest, having found herself mirrored in the long-dead woman.
Synopses – Notes
The project speaks of a unique approach to theatre. More than site-specific, Promenade (which it wasn’t), the audience were invited to take part in the journey towards performance. Thus the performance overtly contained elements of its own creation and the journey towards the Asylum.
Thus Asylum – the novel – contains also the journey towards its making. Hester searches for Mariamne, just as I, the author, searched for Hester and beyond. This is present in the text. The ‘arrival’ is a constellation of elements, fractured images, frozen moments and spreading indulgences – as with Tuag at Yr Hafod. Each reader/audience-member sees from a difference angle, by way of Hester, who journeys towards the ‘asylum’ of Hafod and its inhabitants/inmates, and thence to asylums of a different nature.
It could be argued that I’ve taken the concept too far. Not so. Many of these discoveries occurred after the book was finished and during it’s re-write in 2012. I carried no heroic flag of revolution, no driven malaise, no rebellion against order. If there was intention at all, it was to show that order leads to paralysis, that order and chaos fall into each other constantly.
The novel grew itself within me, also with the help of a multitude of collaborators en route. The first draft was three-quarters finished when I found and met with Brith Gof . Some of these aides to the mise en scene have been formally acknowledged. There were, and still are, many more.
I was always accompanied in the making, in the dark. In the shift of a word such as was given to me by a French farmer somewhere in the region of Arles. In refusing my essayer (to try), he gave me oser (to dare), and the world turned on its axis, as did I along with all my writings.
