The Man Who Walked Away: A Novel
"Rhapsodic . . . Casey's book is a vivid chronicle of the time, bringing alive the mysteries and joys of a fledgling science . . .  Casey evokes -- with no shortage of verve and gusto -- the romance of 19th-century Europe, when madness plagued more than asylums, and nomadism acquired an allure it had never had . . . Mesmerizing . . . As compelling a portrait as you will find of the co-dependence between psychiatrist and patient." -Washington Post"Casey is a consummate stylist, and her new book is so richly engaged with language, so profligate with glorious sentences, that at times the prose ascends to the level of poetry. This is a writer who pays deep, sensual attention to the world." - Geraldine Brooks,The New York Times Book Review"Unconventional and engaging . . . Our need for stories, our relationship with time, the inevitability of loss, and our startling endurance all resonate through her beautifully crafted interweaving of image and observation, fairy tale and fact." -Publishers Weekly, starred review"Lyrical in its style and fascinating in its psychology, Casey’s narrative provokes a host of intriguing questions." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Maud Casey’sThe Man Who Walked Awayis a haunting, deeply empathetic, and rigorously intelligent novel. It is also a seamless marvel of construction and language.The Man Who Walked Awaycast a spell from which I never wished to wake." —Alice Sebold, author ofThe Lovely BonesandThe Almost Moon"Pay attention, this lovely novel urges. As Maud Casey spins this mysteriously urgent tale of patient and doctor entwining, her quicksilver prose yields one astonishing image after another: each moment fleetingly beautiful, each character here—here!—and nowhere else. As this novel is like nothing else. Reading it is a singularly moving experience." —Andrea Barrett, author ofShip FeverandArchangel"Only a writer as brilliant as Maud Casey could write a novel as understated, urgent, and mysterious asThe Man Who Walked Away. In her deft and deeply empathetic hands, this book about dark things--terror, fragility, memory, and illness--shimmers with a rare and wondrous beauty." —Lauren Groff, author ofArcadia"Maud Casey’s ensorcelling marvel of a novel,The Man Who Walked Away, starts with a wind, the poet’s element, that blows over, through and past all, transporting us, as great art will, to the wonderment of being in the world, or in Albert’s case, not in the world. Only in "the vase" of the asylum, with its benign Director and staff, can Albert rest, find love (he hopes) and a history. Casey’s novel, with its accounts of the asylum’s correctives to the anguish of erasure—walks in nature and ‘the song of Nurse Anne’s voice’—is an axe to the ice-encased heart, musically wrought, deeply affecting, wise and consolatory." —Christine Schutt, author ofProsperous Friends"The Man Who Walked Awayis a book of enchantments of an extremely intelligent kind. Dreamlike and sharply real, the novel unfolds in a nineteenth-century asylum where all the inmates have their own poetry of delusion, fear turned to metaphor. Wildly original fiction, with a particular melancholy magic." —Joan Silber, author ofIdeas of HeavenandThe Size of the World