I selected this book to finish off my October reading, due to the great time I had with Prisoner’s Base (1967) in July. That novel received a rare 5/5 from me, so my hopes for The Spider-Orchid were high.
Synopsis
‘The Spider-Orchid (1977), Celia Fremlin’s tenth novel, is among her most unnerving. Peggy has divorced Adrian but she accepts his deep attachment to their fourteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, and hers to him. Rita is Adrian’s mistress, and he believes he is in love with her – until her husband Derek agrees to a divorce. Then Adrian is appalled when Rita moves in, destroying his privacy and endangering his relationship with Amelia.’
Faber & Faber
[I feel this blurb slants events, to make Adrian appear as the victim in this story. He is not.]
Overall Thoughts
Disclaimer
I have to be honest and say I did not enjoy reading this book much. In fact, it made me very sad and annoyed reading it. It is not a bad book, just not a good book for me. In particular I really struggled with the main character, as there is one aspect of his behaviour which was quite triggering for me. Consequently, I had a stronger negative reaction to the plot trajectory, which sees the main characters’ poor attitudes and behaviour unchallenged and instead even supported at times. Ultimately, this character gets the exact life they want, regardless of the lives harmed in the process. I just wanted to make readers aware, so there was some context to the negativity in my review. After all, we have different experiences, so you could very easily go into this book and not have the same issues.
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The opening chapter has Adrian Summers mulling over the times he told his mistress Rita that he wished she could live with him. Since she was married, he thought this was a promise he would never have to fulfil. From the very beginning he still sees his flat as his territory, and Rita as the invading force:
‘The plastic bag of groceries? He could face that. She often brought food when she came for the evening. The suitcase? That, too, was not totally unfamiliar; they had been away together occasionally. But the coat-hangers…? His eye slid past them as if they were a nasty street-accident piled up on the side of the road.’
It is clear that he does not want to give up any of his space, and so far I can’t say he elicits any sympathy. It was his idea after all. Nevertheless, Fremlin does try to add an unnerving note, to make Adrian seem like a fly trapped in a spider’s web:
‘Over the glittering rim of the whisky, he fixed his eyes on the black, springy hair through which his fingers had so often ruffled; on the white, untroubled brow which had once seemed to betoken such serenity of spirit; and he tried to feel the old, melting enchantment. But all he could feel was a sort of sick paralysis of will; a sense of having lost control over his own life; the helpless terror of one who has sold his soul to… What an unfair and terrible thought! Anyone less like the devil than Rita […] it would be difficult to imagine.’
I know at this point we are supposed to feeling anxious on Adrian’s behalf, fearing what awful things Rita will do, but it seems a little like Fremlin is forcing this reaction too hard. Moreover, having now read the book, I know any such concern would be misplaced.
Unexpectedly, chapter two sees Rita having to go back to her husband due to her mum’s 70th birthday party and other social engagements. Rita plans to be back for Sunday, but that is the day Adrian’s daughter, Amelia visits. This is one of many times that Adrian fails to handle the emotional complexity of the situation, and he successfully gets Rita’s backup unnecessarily. We find out more about Adrian’s relationship with his daughter. He admits that he fails to understand, and connect with, her and he tries to blame Amelia’s mother for this. But it is quite easy to read between the lines that Adrian is unsuccessful with interacting with his young child because the way he approaches activities, expects and requires the other person to fit his preferences. Adrian is quite put out initially that he is given visitation rights after the divorce and is expected to use them. He only enjoys spending time with his daughter once he stops taking out her and they just stay at his flat, so he can carry on with his work and she can entertain herself:
‘Never again. Never. If he was a bad father, then he was bloody well going to be a bad father, and Amelia could learn to put up with it. It was a fact of her environment, and the sooner she learned to adapt to it the better. Learning to adapt to his environment has surely been one of the great survival mechanisms of Homo sapiens; and Amelia could damn well learn to survive that way too.’
To say Adrian has a mood dampening effect, is to put it mildly and even by page 20 I was hoping the book would see Rita and Amelia join forces to bump him off. We get to see things from the viewpoint of Amelia and Rita and in their first meeting it is clear to observe how each person in this triangles fails the others. It is not surprising that irritation and frustration boil over. The plot thread involving Amelia’s diary is used in a very obvious way, which is not like Fremlin, who is usually good at taking her novels in unexpected directions. Furthermore, I did find that tension is not built as well in this story, as it is in some of her other books, which I have read. Moreover, when some tension is generated, I often found subsequent events deflated it again.
Reflecting on the book as a whole, I feel that male behaviour is the root cause of a lot of Rita’s destructive tendencies. I do not wish to exonerate Rita’s wrongdoing in this story, but I think much of it could have been prevented. It is her husband, Derek, who invites Adrian over for a secret dinner, to tell him about the “dark side” of Rita:
“Rita is always happy when she’s destroying something. She spent nearly seven years destroying me, and happy all the time – didn’t she tell you? Oh, I’m sure she did, she told everyone: how the first few years of our marriage were quite idyllic? Well, I’m sure that for her they were so, there was nothing left of me at the end of them, nothing at all. And that, of course, was where the trouble started. Having destroyed me utterly, she was up against a bit of a dead end. She was like an artist with no more canvases left to work on […] She has this talent for destruction, you see […] and, like all talents, it clamours to be used […] And this, Adrian, is where you come in…”
Given how much I did not like Adrian, this did not make him more sympathetic, not least because his first decision is to disappear for a whole weekend. During these 48 hours he sees Rita’s mother behind her back to talk about what Derek told him. He doesn’t tell Rita he is going away and nor does he just go to her and talk things over, like a sensible and responsible adult. When Amelia turns up for her Sunday visit, she and Rita begin to bond and have fun together. Yet Adrian returns and goes into a rage just because Rita is putting a pale varnish on Amelia’s fingernails (an activity which seems reasonable to do with a 13-year-old). Yet, it is Adrian, Amelia feels sorry for her, when he decides to lie about why he got angry in front of them all. I would argue that it is Adrian’s shoddy behaviour which pushes Rita and Amelia to not like each other. Left to their own devices they actually got on quite well.
At page 102, we do get an unexpected plot development and for a time after this, my interest in the story picked up for a bit. Furthermore, Fremlin writes things in such a way that it takes a few pages to decide what definitively has happened. I did wonder if the narrative takes too long to get reach this action point. The situation setup from this event has psychological potential and you do want to find out what a key character’s end game is. It also shows what poor examples of humanity Derek and Adrian are. This pattern continues into the denouement, which to be fair to Fremlin has some unexpected plot choices. However, the ending Fremlin chooses for her characters is just wrong. Well, I know it is not an objective right or wrong thing, but for me the fate of the different characters is hugely unsatisfactory. I didn’t like the way the narrative punishes bad female behaviour with male violence, nor did I appreciate the fact that poor male behaviour is not only left unchallenged, but it is almost rewarded in a way. Normally, Fremlin is good at wrapping up her stories, but I did not feel that was the case here.
This one was hard to rate, as Fremlin is a good writer, even if the tension levels are not as high. Her prose is still enjoyable, with interesting turns of phrase. But the characters, the character dynamics and the ending really let this one down for me.
Rating: 3.25/5