Spider

by Patrick McGrath

Book Overview

Spider is gaunt, threadbare, unnerved by everything from his landlady to the smell of gas. He tells us his story in a storm of beautiful language that slowly reveals itself as a fiendishly layered construction of truth and illusion. With echoes of Beckett, Poe, and Paul Bowles, Spider is a tale of horror and madness, storytelling and skepticism, a novel whose dizzying style lays bare the deepest layers of subconscious terror.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679736301
• ISBN13: 9780679736301
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A harrowing novel

In "Spider", Mr McGrath tells the harrowing story of a schizophrenic character called Dennis Cleg. He suffers from hallucinations - visual, auditory and olfactory - and from body delusions, he is physically regressed and has ideas of persecution. At the beginning of the novel, set in 1957, he lives in a shabby house along with other tenants, a "cargo of dead souls" as he calls the place, the landlady of which is a matronly figure, Mrs Wilkinson, who terrifies Cleg. As the story unfolds, the reader gets to know the circumstances which brought Cleg to live in this grimy place where "desolation prevails", in an area of London resembling "a clotted web of dark compartments." He feels that he would relish his solitude and memories were he not so easily thrown into turmoil by the latter. His existence is loveless, monotonous and grey as he often drifts further and further into the back parts of his mind where the reader follows him and tries to discern reality from delusion. A man like Cleg constantly lives in isolation, he has no friends, doesn't want any, doesn't like any. How could he, being permanently nagged by the certainty that others can destroy him with just a glance? From early childhood, being seen created in Cleg a deep sense of unease and he recalls imagining being "a coal-black boy who could move through darkness without being seen." Even years later "the misting and blurring of the visible world gave such comfort to the boy, and to the creature I have since become." Another reason for Cleg avoiding people is the frightening prospect of their thoughts invading his mind. "If I'm not careful these thought patterns of theirs crowd out my own, and I can't have that, I can't have other people's thoughts in my head." Apart from a brilliant psychological portrait of the schizophrenic mind, "Spider" is designed almost like a detective story in which the reader slowly discovers what happened to Cleg in his childhood, the time he spent in a mental institution and the subsequent years at Mrs Wilkinson's house. Highly recommended.

Brooding, atmospheric and very disturbing

Patrick McGrath's debut novel is in the spotlight once again more than a decade after its original publication, thanks to David Cronenberg's dark and deeply disturbing adaptation of "Spider" in which Ralph Fiennes delivers a finely calibrated tour de force in a virtually non-speaking role that shows us what great acting is all about. Except for its subtle timeline shift, the movie is uncannily faithful to McGrath's novel. I read the book after I watched the movie and scene after scene, it was almost identical, except that Cronenberg decided to leave out the scenes relating to Spider's period of incarceration in a nuthouse. McGrath is a master of the dark, disturbing and macabre. He doesn't mess about and knows how to tell a good story. Brooding and deeply atmospheric, the reader believes what Spider tells him about his childhood, his relationship with his adored mother and hated father, his father's cheap and nasty affair with the neighbourhood barmaid and its fatal consequences. Although a little slow and repetitive when McGrath takes us through Spider's routine as he takes temporary refuge in a half-way house after his release, this is unavoidable and in fact a realistic depiction of the circular illusions in Spider's head. There's a twist - more than a little twist - at the end which isn't just clever but credible. Quite clearly, Spider didn't just turn loony from his father's beatings. There is just a whiff of a hint of the underlying cause in Cronenberg's movie - I won't say what it is - but I think it's a perceptive take on a less than pat ending.Those who discovered McGrath through his later works like "Asylum" will find "Spider" an excellent novel. It deserves the attention it is now getting. Recommended.

Trapped in a Spider web

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.

NEVER MIND HIS PARLOUR....

...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...

Chilling, truly horrific, brilliant piece or work

I'm not sure how Mr. McGrath would feel about being compared to Stephen King or Clive Barker. If I were the author of this chilling portrait of absolute insanity, I don't think I'd be flattered.King and Barker are fantacists. McGrath is not. He is an enormously talented writer, gifted with the remarkable ability to present, in first person, a devastating portrait of a child/man who, as a child, was either irretrievably lost in the most unfathomable regions of acute mental illness; or was driven there by two exceptionally cruel people who played an unspeakably vile trick on a fragile and confused little boy.McGrath, unlike King ( an excellent plotter, not a particularly good writer), has access to imagery that pins twisted thoughts, images, sensations, appearances like so many repellent but compelling specimens. Each one a beautifully worded, evocative bit of horror; each one all the more frightening because they could so easily be real.No vampires, bogeymen, banshees,or nameless oozing horrors here. A Spider could be anywhere. And McGrath- that very rare thing in this age of slick, mannered, safe, cookie-cutter best-selling fiction, is a real writer, capable of producing powerful, wonderfully worded original work."This is a good thing." Read it.