Synopses & Reviews
In the late 1970s, Barbara Taylor, then an acclaimed young historian, began to suffer from severe anxiety. In the years that followed, Taylor’s world contracted around her illness. Eventually, her struggles were severe enough to lead to her admission to what had once been England’s largest psychiatric institution, the infamous Friern Mental Hospital in North London.
The Last Asylum is Taylor’s breathtakingly blunt and brave account of those years. In it, Taylor draws not only on her experience as a historian, but also, more importantly, on her own lived history at Friern— once known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum and today the site of a luxury apartment complex. Taylor was admitted to Friern in July 1988, not long before England’s asylum system began to undergo dramatic change: in a development that was mirrored in America, the 1990s saw the old asylums shuttered, their patients left to plot courses through a perpetually overcrowded and underfunded system of community care. But Taylor contends that the emptying of the asylums also marked a bigger loss, a loss of community. She credits her own recovery to the help of a steadfast psychoanalyst and a loyal circle of friends— from Magda, Taylor’s manic-depressive roommate, to Fiona, who shares tips for navigating the system and stories of her boyfriend, the “Spaceman,” and his regular journeys to Saturn. The forging of that network of support and trust was crucial to Taylor’s recovery, offering a respite from the “stranded, homeless feelings” she and others found in the outside world.
A vivid picture of mental health treatment at a moment of epochal change, The Last Asylum is also a moving meditation on Taylor’s own experience, as well as that of millions of others who struggle with mental illness.
Review
"Pershall's way of describing how the disordered mind works is joltingly accurate. is a beautifully written sliver of understanding that is frank, self-deprecating, and, at times, funny. This memoir is more than just a tear-jerking page turner; it's the manifesto of a 'strange girl' and could be, for some, a lifeline." Bust
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"[An] electrifying account . . . this is one whirlwind ride." Booklist
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"This is a gritty, intimate, and at times very sad story of one young woman's struggle with mental illness." Publishers Weekly
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“We believe our response to mental illness is more enlightened, kinder, and more effective than that of the Victorians who built the asylums. Can we be sure? Taylor’s somber investigation, calling on personal experience, challenges complacency, exposes shallow thinking, and points out the flaws and dangers of treatment on the cheap. It is a wise, considered, and timely book.”
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“Eloquent, compassionate, and utterly absorbing. The Last Asylum is the best sort of memoir, transcending the purely personal to confront a larger social history.”
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"It is hard to write well enough about this book because it is so good."
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"Moving, brave and intelligent."
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"Dazzling. . . . A tale that compels you to keep turning the pages. . . . A great achievement, full of life and hope."
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"Exquisitely written and provocative."
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"This superb book combines the experience of the patient and the eye of the historian. Riveting, insightful, and relentlessly honest, it is both social history and memoir, and it makes an important contribution to contemporary debates on the treatment of mental distress."
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"A remarkable memoir-hybrid that opens up history from the inside. . . . A visceral and supremely intelligent account of [Taylor’s] breakdown and psychoanalytic treatment in the last years of the asylum system.”
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"A gripping account . . . as exciting as any adventure story.”
Review
Taylor’s history of asylums and mental health care and chronicle of her own treatment, which included several stays in England’s Friern mental hospital, reveals that mentally ill people have been subject to one medical fad after another, and too many of these trends best suited doctors, nurses, and therapists rather than their patients. . . . Taylor’s precise writing offers an informative overview of medical and social aspects of mental health care over the past few hundred years. . . . Those with mental health problems and their families will learn much here. Students of medicine and of the histories of psychology will also benefit from Taylor’s analysis of their fields.”
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“[A] brave and brilliant memoir. . . . an inside account of being out of one’s mind.”
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"[An] unsparing portrait of a descent into madness."
Synopsis
Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a thirteen-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.
Synopsis
"An utterly unique journey down some of the mind's more mysterious byways . . . ranges from the shocking to the simply lovely."--Marya Hornbacher
Synopsis
Barbara Taylors The Last Asylum is a haunting memoir about illness and the psychiatric health system. A well-regarded historian of nineteenth-century British history and literature, Taylor hasnt merely written an account of the British asylum systemshes been a patient in it. Her battles with mental illness were sufficiently severe to lead to her institutionalization in the early 1980s, not long before the longstanding system began to change dramatically. Socially conscious and self-aware, Taylor writes incisively about her own position and privileges in various systems. She speaks clearly, bravely, and explicitly not only about her own experience but about the contemporary treatment of the mentally ill and the need for society to provide, in some sense, asylum for those who need it.
About the Author
Barbara Taylor is professor of humanities at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Eve and the New Jerusalem,Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, and, with Adam Phillips, On Kindness.