Quickening Maze, Paperback

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009, this is the second novel from the 2008 Somerset Maugham Award. After a lifetime struggling with alcohol, neglect and depression, in 1840 the poet John Clare is incarcerated. Young Alfred Tennyson moves nearby and becomes entangled in the life of the asylum. This historically accurate novel describes the closed world of the asylum and Nature's paradise outside the walls.