Introduction
Patrick McGrath (born 7 February 1950) is a British novelist, whose work has been categorized as gothic fiction.
Early life
McGrath was born in London and grew up near Broadmoor Hospital from the age of five where his father was Medical Superintendent. He was educated at a Jesuit boarding school in Windsor from the age of thirteen, before moving to another Jesuit public school, Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, upon the closureof his first school. In 1967, at the age of sixteen, he ran away from this institution to London. He graduated from the Birmingham College of Commerce with an honours degree in English and American literature in 1971, awarded externally by the University of London, before his father found him a job later that year in Penetang, Ontario working in the Oakridge top-security unit of the Penetang Mental Health Centre.
He has lived in various parts of North America and also spent several years on a remote island in the North Pacific, before finally settling in New York City in 1981.
McGrath also worked as a teacher of creative writing to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall semester of 2006. He also taught craft courses for a number of years in the MFA program at Hunter College, New York, and since 2007, has taught an MFA program at the New School in New York.
Career
His fiction is principally characterised by the first person unreliable narrator, and recurring subject matter in his work includes mental illness, repressed homosexuality and adulterous relationships.
His novel Martha Peake won the Premio Flaiano Prize in Italy and Asylum was shortlisted for the 1996 Guardian Fiction Prize.
He is also currently on the writing faculties of both the New School in New York and Princeton University.
Personal life
He is married to actress Maria Aitken and divides his time between London and New York City. He has three siblings, of which he is the eldest: Steve, a harbour manager in California; Judy, a teacher in Italy; and Simon, who works in movies and technology in London.
Novels
- The Grotesque (1989) (filmed by John-Paul Davidson in 1995 — see The Grotesque, aka Grave Indiscretion or Gentlemen Don't Eat Poets)
- Spider (1990) (filmed by David Cronenberg in 2002 — see Spider)
- Dr Haggard's Disease (1993)
- Asylum (1996) (filmed by David Mackenzie in 2005 — see Asylum)
- Martha Peake: a Novel of the Revolution (2000)
- Port Mungo (2004)
- Trauma (2008)
- Constance (2013)
- The Wardrobe Mistress (2017)
Three of McGrath's novels and one of his stories have been adapted into films, two of which adaptations (Spider, 2002 and The Grotesque, 1995) were written by McGrath himself. The film adaptation for Asylum, 2005 was written by Patrick Marber and a short film made of The Lost Explorer from Blood and Water and Other Tales was adapted by Tim Walker.
Other works
- Blood and Water and Other Tales (1989) (short-story collection)
- Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now (2005) (linked short stories)
- Writing Madness (2017) (collected short stories from 1989-2014, along with four decades of selected criticism)
McGrath has also co-edited and wrote the introduction to a highly influential anthology of short fiction, The New Gothic.
He has published many reviews and essays, including introductions to Barnaby Rudge, Moby Dick, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and In a Glass Darkly.