The Man Who Walked Away

Name: The Man Who Walked Away
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Maud Casey
ISBN: 9781490618913

Author: Maud Casey

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 8 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 07/11/2014

Categories: Fiction

Synopsis

Publisher Marketing: In a trance-like state, Albert walks--from Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russia--all over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, he's left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.Loosely based on the case history of Albert Dadas, a psychiatric patient in the hospital of St. Andre in Bordeaux in the nineteenth century, "The Man Who Walked""Away" imagines Albert's wanderings and the anguish that caused him to seek treatment with a doctor who would create a diagnosis for him, a narrative for his pain. In a time when mental health diagnosis is still as much art as science, Maud Casey takes us back to its tentative beginnings and offers us an intimate relationship between one doctor and his patient as, together, they attempt to reassemble a lost life. Through Albert she gives us a portrait of a man untethered from place and time who, in spite of himself, kept setting out, again and again, in search of wonder and astonishment.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bandit on September 20, 2016

A man who is compelled to walk. An analyst with penchant for cycling who is compelled to help the man compelled to walk. I really wanted to like this book. I really thought I would. Or at least be able to relate to it on several levels, as an avid walker, cyclist, reader and no stranger to compulsio......more

Goodreads review by Maxine on February 28, 2014

Albert has had a compulsion to walk since the age of thirteen. He has traversed most of Europe, has been arrested for vagrancy, has enlisted, then deserted, the army, yet, he has only fleeting and fragmentary memories of these journeys and events. Finally, a lamplighter, aware of Albert’s compulsion......more

Goodreads review by Galen on June 14, 2014

The Man Who Walked Away is a short novel numbering 231 pages of elegant prose bordering on poetry. It is a book about desertion, flight, childhood guilt, memory and the importance of the present moment. The protagonist, a young man named Albert, finds himself in nineteenth century Europe. Quite lite......more

Goodreads review by Robert on August 02, 2014

Wow, wow, wow. This is a three wow book--my highest rating for a work of fiction. The author is an enchanting, nay, entrancing stylist. She is apparently in love with words and I am in love with anyone who can transfer that love to the page. The book is just over 231 pages in length, but it took me......more

Goodreads review by Ken on April 26, 2014

Reading some of the reviews on Amazon prior to reading this book, I anticipated a much different experience. While I found the story interesting, and some of the characters engaging, I also found the writing somewhat pedantic. You could speedread portions of this book and not miss anything. I kept m......more