A seamless blend of historical fact and fiction…Foulds’s writing has a poetic intensity and his descriptions of the autumnal woods around the asylum are as piercingly keen as his insight into the minds of the patients, the doctor and his family
Daily Mail

A seamless blend of historical fact and fiction…Foulds’s writing has a poetic intensity and his descriptions of the autumnal woods around the asylum are as piercingly keen as his insight into the minds of the patients, the doctor and his family
Daily Mail

Impressive … The key to this success is the concentration of Fould’s writing, which manages to seem both simultaneously poised and flowing in its urgency
Andrew Motion, The Guardian

Adam Foulds won the 2008 Costa Poetry Award, and he is a skilful poet. These talents are well displayed in his prose which, while lyrical, never grows fussy or highfalutin.’ He draws a walk-on character with a few deft strokes
Lionel Shriver, Telegraph

Adam Foulds won the 2008 Costa Poetry Award, and he is a skilful poet. These talents are well displayed in his prose which, while lyrical, never grows fussy or highfalutin.’ He draws a walk-on character with a few deft strokes
Lionel Shriver, Telegraph

In The Quickening Maze, Foulds displays in abundance the same kind of precision of observation and empathy of imagination that he gives here to Clare…The world he evokes…is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means. It is impossible to guess where Foulds will travel next in his fiction, but it is safe to assume that the journey with him will be well worth taking
Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times

A work of strikingly beautiful, unforced writing
Daily Express

A work of strikingly beautiful, unforced writing
Daily Express

The language is simple, sometimes adorned with fleeting and apt images: the sky is ‘cloud-breeding’, summer clouds are ‘curds’
Phillip Womack, Literary Review

The chief pleasure of the book is its prose: exquisite yet measured, precise, attentive to the world
Sunday Telegraph

The chief pleasure of the book is its prose: exquisite yet measured, precise, attentive to the world
Neel Murkerjee, Sunday Telegraph

The chief pleasure of the book is its prose: exquisite yet measured, precise, attentive to the world
Sunday Telegraph

Fould’s exceptional novel is like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic – the word-perfect fruit of a poet’s sharp eye and noevlist’s limber reach
The Times

Fould’s exceptional novel is like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic – the word-perfect fruit of a poet’s sharp eye and noevlist’s limber reach
Tom Gatti, The Times

Fould’s exceptional novel is like a lucid dream: earthy and true, but shifting, metamorphic – the word-perfect fruit of a poet’s sharp eye and noevlist’s limber reach
The Times

Intensely pleasurable to read, studded as it is with electrically acute images and phrases
Observer

His work [is] intensely pleasurable to read, studded as it is with electrically acute images and phrases
Olivia Laing, Observer

Intensely pleasurable to read, studded as it is with electrically acute images and phrases
Observer

Foulds wisely resists the temptation to turn Clare into an idiot savant, lunacy as the flip side of genius. The horror of a disintegrating mind is also subtly conveyed through fractured internal monologue
Financial Times

Remarkable second novel…The Quickening Maze confirms Foulds as one of the most interesting and talented writers of his generation
Peter Parker, TLS

Foulds wisely resists the temptation to turn Clare into an idiot savant, lunacy as the flip side of genius. The horror of a disintegrating mind is also subtly conveyed through fractured internal monologue
Financial Times

Foulds was fast becoming the pin-up boy of contemporary poets…this beautifully described second novel suggests he’s equally a master of prose
Mariella Frostrup, Radio Times

[a] luminously written tale…he [Foulds] draws you in with spellbinding images and sympathetic characterisation. Written with imaginative precision, it’s a dream of a book… Foulds has made this world, and the characters within it, his own
Metro

Foulds was fast becoming the pin-up boy of contemporary poets…this beautifully described second novel suggests he’s equally a master of prose
Mariella Frostrup, Radio Times

A profoundly imagined historical novel, with a gripping plot and some memorably beautiful scenes
Craig Raine, Times Literary Supplement

A profoundly imagined historical novel, with a gripping plot and some memorably beautiful scenes
Craig Raine, Times Literary Supplement

This imaginative, atmospheric period novel has style and a host of characters
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

This imaginative, atmospheric period novel has style and a host of characters
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

It takes courage to write a novel about two of Britain’s best-know poets – John Clare and Alfred Lord Tennyson – and their encounter in an Epping Forest asylum. It takes skill to turn that into an engrossing, beautiful novel. Foulds has shown both
Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times

It takes courage to write a novel about two of Britain’s best-know poets – John Clare and Alfred Lord Tennyson – and their encounter in an Epping Forest asylum. It takes skill to turn that into an engrossing, beautiful novel. Foulds has shown both
Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times

Rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between
Guardian, Julian Barnes

Rich in its understanding and representation of the mad, the sane, and that large overlapping category in between
Guardian, Julian Barnes

Every character, every narrative strand is stunningly written, making it an engrossing and unusual historical novel
Sunday Telegraph

Every character, every narrative strand is stunningly written, making it an engrossing and unusual historical novel
Sunday Telegraph

The world he evokes is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means
Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times

The world he evokes is conjured up with remarkable intensity and economy of means
Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times

The novel is most notable for its savage descriptions of rural life
Alfred Hickling, Guardian

The novel is most notable for its savage descriptions of rural life
Alfred Hickling, Guardian

Foulds does a marvellous job of evoking the atmosphere of the forest. His prose has none of the awkwardness one often encounters when real-life characters are brought into play
Sunday Herald

Foulds does a marvellous job of evoking the atmosphere of the forest. His prose has none of the awkwardness one often encounters when real-life characters are brought into play
Sunday Herald

With its unflinching look at treatments of madness, and its authentic period feel, this is an appropriately disturbing, while also beautifully written, story of human endeavour – and human failure.
The Independent on Sunday

With its unflinching look at treatments of madness, and its authentic period feel, this is an appropriately disturbing, while also beautifully written, story of human endeavour – and human failure.
The Independent on Sunday

Chosen in The New Yorker Books of the year 2010: 'An intricate homage to two nineteenth-century poets'.
New Yorker

Chosen in The New Yorker Books of the year 2010: 'An intricate homage to two nineteenth-century poets'.
New Yorker

Jessica Willis 24 October 2010

Adam Foulds novel `The Quickening Maze' is a novel loosely based on factual events which took place at High Beach Private Asylum in Epping Forest where the poet John Clare was incarcerated during the 1840s.

The novel gives the reader brief encounters with a large array of characters such as John Clare, the owner Dr Allen and members of his family, other patients and Alfred Tennyson. The writing could be described as sparse but unfortunately due to the mass of different characters combined with the novels short size meant that sometimes the narrative was very confusing in places and I never really felt as though the main issues were fully explored.

On reflection though there is a lot to like about it. The narrative is beautiful and creates an atmosphere of dreamy silence and has an almost Gothic feel to it. The contrast between the Asylum and the quiet surrounding forest where Gypsies make their home is wonderfully done as are the delusions of John Clare who thinks he is married to his first love and Hannah, the Dr's daughter who is embarking on her first love.

The novel does pick up momentum towards the end and I did begin to get submerged in the ‘maze’ of the different narratives and the general atmosphere that the book inspired.

Would I recommend this? Although this novel does have its problems I am glad I read it and can understand why it was short-listed for the booker prize in 2009. I would recommend this more for people who enjoy a more quiet pace of novel with beautiful prose.