1 Sep 2017
(BAD MEMORIES #2): ASYLUM
BACK COVER BLURB: Doctor Peter Alexander is hired to be doctor at the Middleton Home for the Mentally Retarded in Jonesville, Florida and he finds out his training and reality conflict.
Set in 1957-1968 Florida he must survive a cruel nurse, patients and staff who are more same than sane.
Will Doctor Alexander survive? Will he maintain his sanity?
FIRST SENTENCE {INTRODUCTION}: The events in this novelette, set in a fictional town in Florida, are based on the historical records of physical and mental abuse that occurred at Penhurst Asylum in Pennsylvania, Letchworth Village in Rockland County, New York and Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York.
MEMORABLE MOMENT {PAGE 21}: At 7pm Doctor Alexander opened the rusted solid metal door to the basement of building B with a squeal of rust his heart jumped a beat as the door slammed shut. He looked down the dark corridor and he sees a light coming from under a black door.
SOURCE: Received from the author.
READ FOR: Not applicable.
MY THOUGHTS: Not particularly the best written of books and in need of an edit and yet Asylum is one of those books in which the author obviously has a real ardor for the subject - that of institutional abuse - at the heart of the book.
With a nurse that makes One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest's Nurse Ratched look like a pussy cat and and an ending that, though I kind of knew it was coming, still saw me covered in goosebumps, essentially the stuff of nightmares ... for those of us Brits of a certain age it put me in mind of one of those dramas that formed Tales Of The Unexpected (the British anthology series featuring tales of horror, mystery and suspense) that saw the teenage me watching the television from between my fingers.
For myself personally a tad too short. I'd be interested to know if there are plans to bring the Bad Memories series (which so far consists of two novelettes) together in one edition of horror, mystery and suspense.
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