Love in the Asylum : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Written, Honest and Emotional
Review: Love is a complicated thing. It is complicated enough without the added stresses of extreme factors such as mental or physical illness, drug addiction or a difficult childhood. But as Lisa Carey demonstrates in her latest novel, LOVE IN THE ASYLUM, love happens and flourishes regardless of such circumstances. And sometimes love grows in the most unlikely of places.

Alba Elliot, a children's author, has been suffering with debilitating mental illness for the past ten years. She has been in and out of the Abenaki Mental Hospital all of that time. Cool and jaded, masking a deep sadness and loss, Alba feels comfortable in the walls and on the lawns of Abenaki. When heroin addict Oscar Jameson is admitted to the drug rehab unit, Alba's comfort is challenged. The attraction between the two is almost instantaneous, but neither is prepared emotionally for what they are feeling. Thirty-year-old Oscar is detoxing and is not convinced rehab is the place for him or that he is finally done with drugs. He is fascinated by Alba but still preoccupied with drugs and his own issues, not in the least his troubled relationship with his brother. Alba likes Oscar but hates the fact that he is a junkie. Both have a complicated past that colors all they do and feel in the present. Still, on the lawn of Abenaki, something is developing between them.

Around the time Oscar is checked into Abenaki, Alba, while working in the hospital library, comes across a series of letters from a woman who was a patient to her young son. In the 1930s Mary Doherty was put in the hospital by her husband, and there she remained until she died almost ten years later. She was accused of hysteria, of setting fires and believing herself to be a powerful healer in touch with the realm of the dead. As Alba reads the letters, never sent as Mary was forbidden contact with her family, she learns more and more of Mary's tragic history. Mary, whose real name was Mesatawe, was an Abenaki Indian, gifted with a unique power (diagnosed later by doctors as epilepsy and treated with electroshock therapy), and a drive to help heal the other women at the hospital. As we read the letters along with Alba we learn of Mary's special connection to her son Peter, the intended recipient of the letters.

Mary's letters to Peter reopen a never quite healed wound in Alba, and soon Alba and Oscar run away from the hospital in search of the now elderly Peter and a type of healing impossible within the walls of Abenaki.

LOVE IN THE ASYLUM is not just the story of Alba and Oscar, although their tentative, sweet and emotionally difficult affair is at the center of the novel. It is also the story of familial love. There is the enabling love between Alba and her father, and there is the frustrating love between Oscar and his brother, where a violent past lays just below the surface. There is especially the love of mothers for sons; Mary's for Peter and the raw love that Alba feels for the son she lost a decade ago.

Carey's novel is wonderfully written, honest and emotional without sentimentality. It is simply a joy to read. She successfully weaves the stories of Alba, Oscar and Mary and unifies them into a poignant whole. The devastating losses felt by the characters are offset with just enough humor to keep the novel from being sappy, boring or overly tragic. Despite the fact that the novel wraps up a little too neatly at the end, this is a highly recommendable novel from a creative and talented author.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman