The Hothouse by the East River – Muriel Spark (1973)

The Hothouse by the East River is a strange little novel, at once oddly unsettling and other worldly. Written in the present tense – a style Muriel Spark had already employed to great effect in The Driver’s Seat, lending her story an immediacy that works well here.

As with that earlier novel The Girls of Slender Means, here Spark concerns herself with the fall out from the Second World War and has used her own experiences to do so. However, The Hothouse from the East River is entirely different with a very sixties/seventies feel to it – the war is viewed in retrospect, from the distance of 1970s New York society. This society immediately feels slightly off kilter, this is deliberate of course, and in time will make absolute sense.

In their New York apartment, overlooking the East River, live Elsa and Paul Hazlett, it is a long way from where they started. Paul; originally from Montenegro met Elsa during the Second World War when they were both working for British intelligence at the Compound deep in the English countryside. These sections recreating life at the compound in 1944 are the most real parts of the story (again this is deliberate and will make sense to the reader who realises what is actually going on.) Muriel Spark worked in a similar environment during the war, and in writing these sections of this novel was drawing heavily on her own experience.

Here they worked alongside former German POWs – including Helmut Kiel. Now Elsa insists that she has seen Helmut Kiel working at a shoe store on Madison Avenue, looking just as he always did. Paul points out that Kiel died in prison back in Germany and anyway he would have aged, as they both have, yet Elsa insists it is the same man.

Paul has noticed there is something odd about his wife – her shadow falls the wrong way, which once he has noticed it, he really can’t stop seeing.

“He sees her shadow cast on the curtain, not on the floor where it should be according to the position of the setting sun from the window bay behind her, crosstown to the West Side. He sees her shadow, as he has seen it many times before, cast once more unnaturally. Although he has expected it, he turns away his head at the sight.”

What is it, that Elsa stares at all the time from their window over the East River? The household is peculiar too, Garven, Elsa’s analyst has moved in, playing the part of the couple’s butler so he can better observe his client. Absurdity looms large throughout this short novel; an overheated apartment with a heating system which seems unable to be regulated, a maid who threatens to jump from the window, and Paul wrestling the shoes from his wife’s feet as he believes the soles have a secret code written on them. Elsa’s best friend Princess Xavier, visits often, breeds silkworms in her bosom. All the time, Paul and Elsa appear to exist in a society of their own making.

“But Princess Xavier is not about to be perplexed on any point whatsoever. She is now interested in something else, far away in her thoughts, probably Long Island, where her farm of sheep and silkworms will be shivering for want of her presence and, of course, the cold. She opens one of the folds revealing a pink bulge of bosom. She puts her hand within the crease; her eggs are safe. She is in the habit of keeping the eggs of her silkworms warm between and under her folds of breasts; she also takes new-born lambs to her huge ancestral bed, laying them at her feet early in the cold spring-time, and she does many such things. She now folds herself back into her coverings and starts the process of rising from the sofa.”

Nearby lives Pierre; Paul and Elsa’s son, he is getting ready to produce a production of Peter Pan, with all the roles taken by people over sixty – Pierre considers this twist will be its selling point. Of course, one can’t help but be reminded of that scene where Wendy starts to sew Peter Pan’s shadow back on – in that famous story of the boy who doesn’t grow up. Elsa’s shadow causes much disquiet among members of her family.

The most interesting aspect of the story is the one aspect I really can’t discuss – but it is what makes this novel so memorable. It is the twist which lies right at the heart of this novel, and which I feel I should have figured out much earlier than I did.

In his excellent introduction (which opens with a warning to new readers to read it after the novel – I heartily approve this practice) to this Polygon edition, Ian Rankin tells us; that Spark had …

“…journeyed a long way from her childhood Edinburgh and wartime England, but she had more travelling still to do.”

The Hothouse by the East River is a surreal little novel which leaves the reader with several questions – I can imagine it making a good book group read – it will certainly divide readers. I found it compelling and bizarre, but still enjoyable for all that.