Patrick McGrath

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I see he has a new novel out, Port Mungo, which sounds like it could be great. The book of his I really loved was Asylum, set in a 1950s English mental asylum, about a psychopathic sculptor patient and a wife's doctor who develops an obsession with him. Neo-gothic at its best. I've had a little less luck with his other books, though. Spider was pretty good, Dr Haggard's Disease didn't really take off for me. All of them are basically about art, madness and obsession and what binds the three.

Anyone else here read McGrath?

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:32 (twenty-one years ago)

His book of short stories that I read is cuhraaaaaaaazy. I loved those stories. He has quite the imagination. I really liked Spider and Asylum as well. I think the story collection had Freud on the cover. I could be remembering wrong though. Asylum is the kind of book I could see myself reading again.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

One of these days I would like to read Martha Peake. That always looked good to me. And I just looked up the new one. That looks like it would be good as well!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 12:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't read Martha Peake, I'll save it for a beach holiday. But having glanced at it in a bookshop, it looks just a bit too camped-up over the top Hammer Horror to me. His new novel looks like a return to the "mad tortured artist" theme, I like the sound of it.

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 12:14 (twenty-one years ago)

four weeks pass...

I read Spider after having seen the film and I found it very beautiful!

― Tatiana (wondertati), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 13:29 (twenty-one years ago)

There's a movie of Spider? I read that a couple of months ago because I was on a creepy book kick after reading Perfume for the first time, the same kick which just lead to me reading and enjoying Maugham's "The Magician." Anyways, yes, Spider was good and creepy.

― Comment dits-on...eh... le NA? (Nick A.), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 20:31 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278731/

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 20:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh weird, I was totally aware of that movie, I've seen posters for it and the case in the video store, but hadn't made the connection to the book. Duh.

― Comment dits-on...eh... le NA? (Nick A.), Friday, 18 June 2004 14:09 (twenty-one years ago)

two years pass...

I read Spider and The Grotesque back in the early 90s and really liked both of them, but never got around to seeing the films when they came out. A few years later I read Dr Haggard's Disease which I found really heavy-going, and that put me off reading any more of his stuff. They all seem to be very dark, set in the past, and tell the story through the eyes of dysfunctional loners. In Spider and Dr Haggard's Disease it gradually becomes clear that you can't believe everything the narrator is telling you. Apparently the same is true of The Grotesque, but this went completely over my head and I just read it as a 'straight' story (which according to that link is how they filmed it).

― Teh littlest HoBBo (the pirate king), Wednesday, 20 September 2006 08:37 (nineteen years ago)

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