Spider: A Novel [Hardcover]

Patrick McGrath (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1990

Set in 1957, this book tells the story of Spider, a lonely figure who returns to the East End of London after 20 years in an asylum. Spider moves into a boarding house and begins to write an account of his childhood, providing a disturbing vision of psychotic illness from inside.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

I cut into my potato, and dead in the middle of the halved potato there was a . . . thick, slow discharge I recognized as blood.

A wry, mesmerizing tale of madness in a London suffused with the smells of jellied eels, leaking gas, outdoor lavatories and furry feet. Spider obsesses about wetness and fire and sexuality, about "this business of the thought patterns" and "the dead eyes" of his father and a woman named Hilda. Somewhere inside Spider's internal web of illusions lurks the truth about his mother's death. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

McGrath here pares away the campy, macabre elements of his previous works ( Blood and Water and Other Tales ; The Grotesque ) in favor of a closely observed study of madness, memory and storytelling . Dennis Clegg, affectionately nicknamed Spider by his mother, returns to his London neighborhood after 20 years in a mental hospital and begins a journal to "create some order in the jumble of memories"--that is, to unravel the murky circumstances surrounding his mother's murder. This crime, he contends, was committed by his father, but has been pinned on Spider. Through lucid, poetically charged reconstructions, we are introduced to an unhappy family triad: alcoholic father, passive mother and an only child who becomes increasingly delusional. In Spider's telling, the truth of things is elusive, but the stormy wonder of the prose--Spider describes himself as a "baggy, threadbare sort of a customer, really--my clothes have always seemed to flap about me like sailcloth, like sheets and shrouds . . . and they always look vacant, untenanted . . . as though I were nothing and the clothes were clinging merely to an idea of a man"--perfectly conveys the roiling vertigo of mental illness along with the clarity it often incites. Spider's unreliability as narrator deepens McGrath's portrait of an unfathomable reality and preserves the refinements of his philosophical skepticism. An admixture of Poe and the comic vulnerabilities of Beckett, this tale lingers long and disturbingly in the mind. (Oct.).
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 221 pages
• Publisher: Poseidon Pr; 1st Ed. edition (October 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671665103
• ISBN-13: 978-0671665104
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NEVER MIND HIS PARLOUR...., June 23, 2001

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spider (Paperback)

...take a step into Spider's mind -- and after you do that, you'd better pray that the door didn't slam shut behind you. You're definitely going to want a way out -- this is a pret-ty scary place.

Of the three novels and one book of short stories I've read by Patrick McGrath, this, I believe, is his masterpiece. As Spider narrates his story -- in an almost-torrential syntax that in itself reveals a lot about him -- the reader is inexorably drawn further and further into the mind of a man who is slipping away before our eyes. Spider is hanging on to the ledge of reality by his fingernails, while events conspire to take their turn trodding on his fingers. His thoughts and fears are as real to us as if they were our own. His world -- more-or-less present-day London -- seems as alien to us as a Martian landscape. Everyday people, events, objects and places leap out of the mist at him with frightening intensity -- we feel our breath and our pulse quicken repeatedly as he/we attempt to deal with the ever-more threatening reality of daily life in a halfway house, as images and ghosts from the past intermingle with pieces of the present, and it gets harder and harder to tell one from the other.

McGrath is, at the core, a master story-teller. His interest in the psychological most likely stems from his father's work at Broadmoor Hospital in England, where he grew up. All of his works share an eye for detail, and the care he takes in doing his homework is very apparent. This book is one of the most compelling, captivating and frightening portraits of madness I have ever read -- and it's thoroughly entertaining as well. It's staggering how much power McGrath has been able to cram into this slim volume -- without crowding out a fine story, told with a uniquely fractured clarity and in an unforgettable tone.

The reader is also encouraged to check out a couple of his other fine novels: ASYLUM and THE GROTESQUE. The former is one of the most unusual love stories I've ever run across, and the latter will surprise and reward you with its combination of suspense and wickedly funny humor.

I'll take Patrick McGrath, a true modern master of the Gothic style, over any of the mass-producing 'scary novel' writing machines (who are so in vogue) any day. The quality of his work will surely stand the test of time. I would suggest not reading any of these with the light off, but that would be difficult, would it not...

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A sympathetic but depressing portrayal of schizophrenia, March 12, 2001

By 

C. ANZIULEWICZ "Chuck Anziulewicz" (Spring Hill, WV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spider (Paperback)

Back in college I decided to take a class in abnormal psychology as an elective. Patrick McGrath's novel "Spider" would've made good supplemental reading for that class. What we have here is the journal of one Dennis Clegg, a man in his early 30s who is living in a kind of halfway house for the mentally ill in London. Dennis, whom we learn is nicknamed "Spider," has returned to London after being institutionalized with acute schizophrenia for some 20 years. He has never truly recovered, however, and as this narrative progresses we vicariously experience his increasingly fragile grip on reality. What precipitated his illness seems to have been the death of his mother when he was 13 or so; yet the exact circumstances or her death are cloaked in Spider's own paranoid delusions and hallucinations.

In "Spider," Patrick McGrath has crafted an affecting yet tragic and depressing portrayal of madness. This is powerful, though not necessarily enjoyable, reading. Rumor has it that director David Cronenberg's next film is to be an adaptation of this novel; if he is successful in translating McGrath's novel to the screen, is should be quite a film.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trapped in a Spider web, October 16, 2002

By 

Alysson Oliveira "Alysson Oliveira" (Sao Paulo-- Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider (Paperback)

This is my third Patrick McGrath's novel and my favourite so far. I've read `Asylum' and `Dr. Haggard's Disease' . The first is a haunting and dark love story --quite different, and very touching--, the second is interesting, however I don't know what happened, but I couldn't click with the book. But `Spider' became my favourite, and it is unforgettable to me.

It is a story of man, named Dennis `Spider' Cleg, a man who lives in a kind of halfway house for the mentally ill in London. As he is both protagonist and narrator, we are never sure of what he is talking about. Maybe things happened the way he says, maybe he is alucinating. Who knows? He is a man with mental problems that is followed by the image of his father killing his mother and bringing a whore to substitute for her. And we learn all that happened from Spider's sick mind. Until the surprising end.

I highly recommend this novel to readers who like dark thrillers, with psycological undertones. The characters are very well developed. Spider is a human being as any other, we can easily understand what happened to this man that led him to be the way he is.