the hothouse by the east river

The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark (Viking, 1973)

Another weird, dark, chilly, and elegant novel by Spark.

SPOILERS. Paul, born in Montenegro, meets Elsa at the secret compound somewhere in the English countryside where they are both doing intelligence work during WWII.  They work alongside some military men and several German POWs.  They marry, and after the war they move to New York City, to an apartment in a building that faces the East River (that in summer  has insufficient air conditioning and in winter unstoppable heat), have two children, Pierre and Katarina, and live a luxurious Upper East Side life.

One day Elsa, whose shadow always falls mysteriously towards rather away from the light, sees a clerk in a shoe store on Madison Avenue who she thinks is one of the former German POWs, who supposedly died in the war, even though he appears not to have aged.  Paul is convinced that the shoe clerk and the POW are the same man, and his reappearance spooks him and makes him paranoid.  Meanwhile, Garen, Elsa’s unorthodox analyst, moves into their apartment and acts as their butler so that he may study Elsa more closely.  Their friend Princess Xavier incubates silkworms beneath her voluminous breasts, and Pierre produces a version of Peter Pan with old people playing all the children’s roles.  Paul’s paranoia increases and Elsa’s shadow continues to fall in the wrong direction; he begins to claim that she “isn’t there” or is dead.  And in fact, at the very end of this short novel we realized that all the characters are not there, or dead: Paul and Elsa and the Princess and several of their colleagues (who have reappeared in NYC and joined their social circle) all died in a bomb attack in London during the blitz.  So the book represents some sort of after, or alternative, life: a ghost story.

Spark writes with her customary icy elegance and sly wit, but it’s hard to know what the meaning of this weird conceit is.  The book had no resonance (for me), and it left me feeling cheated and a little disappointed.