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KIRKUS REVIEW ASYLUM 7/14/2021 12:27:23 PM
A taut psychological thriller set in the eerie remnants of an abandoned asylum. In 2012,Kyle Hampton leads a happy life with his wife and young daughter, but he’s plagued by memories of his childhood in Rose Hill Asylum, where he was born. There, abuse was rampant, and scores of children died over the years before it was shut down 28 years ago. Many years later, he and his best friend, Randy, a fellow former asylum resident, still find themselves drawn back to the closed-down building, which retains its sinister atmosphere. Lawrence paints these visits vividly, and the asylum itself becomes the work’s most fully realized locale as the friends’ visits become increasingly unsettling. Throughout, the author also successfully intersperses this story with Kyle’s troubling recollections—particularly of his encounters with bullies and of the fact that his younger brother, Roy, was not adopted with him; Kyle escaped the brutal asylum, but his sibling didn’t, leaving him guilt-ridden. There’s an underdeveloped plotline involving Kyle’s difficult relationship with his wife, as well. However, Lawrence also takes readers into the mind of a serial killer known as Stitches—a man who haunts the asylum, dressed as a clown, and currently preys upon local women; as the killer slowly makes his existence known to Kyle, a tense cat-and-mouse game plays out. The author manages to keep the villain shrouded in mystery by carefully unveiling his connections to the asylum over the course of the story. Throughout the novel, including in Stitches’ horrific monologues, the author presents a searing indictment of the mental health and asylum system in the United States over several decades. Action scenes dominate the work’s latter sections, but the novel’s strongest aspects are its forbidding atmosphere and its damning depiction of what happens to kids who fall through cracks in the system.
A well-paced and creepy novel with a strong message.
