A CRUEL MADNESS by Colin Thubron (Atlantic...

A CRUEL MADNESS by Colin Thubron (Atlantic Monthly: $13.95). The calm voice of a rational man tells the story of his quiet life with all the drama of dry sticks rubbing together, rubbing, rubbing, until there’s a spark, a trail of smoke, a flicker, and the next thing you know you are surrounded by the fire of his passionate obsession. There are clues along the way that the story will slip from normalcy, the “spasms of recognition” of a man who sees his beloved 10 years after their brief affair, the “absurd desolation” he feels when she slips away again. Thubron has a gift for description (as one would expect of an award-winning travel writer): “Every wall of the hospital is lacerated with fire escapes,” or, “In early morning, when the mist steals off the hills, and round the hospital, you might imagine the whole institution underwater and its giant trees turned to seaweeds.” The narrator seems to be telling you the facts, but you slowly realize that all may not be as it seems to him. Sophia, his lover, may be a patient in the Welsh lunatic asylum where much of the tale unfolds. The narrator, Daniel, may be a volunteer worker there, as he says. Thubron stirs the muddy waters of passion to the point where reality and delusion are but different sides of the same occurrence, where reason and paranoia coexist. And the underwater imagery gives poetic voice to the dissolution of Daniel’s world. This isn’t just another novel about madness and despair. It is a gripping tale of passion, however misspent, and the failure of an entire set of characters to come to grips with life seems not as distant from “normal” as one might think, but simply a look deeper into the mind than most of us dare to probe. Thubron is incurably curious, in his investigations of human depths as well as in his travels around the world, and the results are spellbinding.