''The Hothouse by the East River'' is a novel by Scottish author

Muriel Spark Dame Muriel Sarah Spark (née Camberg; 1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006). was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. Life Muriel Camberg was born in the Bruntsfield area of Edinburgh, the daughter of Bernard Camberg, an ...

published in 1973. The main two settings of the novel both reflect the author's life where she lived in Manhattan and where she worked in a POW camp in Britain in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Inspiration

From a later introduction to the novel

Ian Rankin Sir Ian James Rankin (born 28 April 1960) is a Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels. Early life Rankin was born in Cardenden, Fife. His father, James, owned a grocery shop, and his mother, Isobel, worked in a schoo ...

wrote 'As early as 1965, Muriel Spark had a title in mind for a new book. That title was ''Hothouse East River''. The novel itself, however, would not appear until 1973, much changed from its original incarnation, as Spark herself would confide during a 1970 interview with the ''Guardian'' newspaper: ‘I’m so interested in the present tense that I’ve redone a book I’ve been working on for three years,''The Hot House by the East River'', and put it all in the present tense.’ ... the novel she would eventually pen about New York would be one of her strangest, most jarring works, painting an unflattering portrait of the city's wealthier denizens and their spiritually empty lives...'

Plot

Wealthy couple Paul and Elsa live in 1970's

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

overlooking the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

with throwbacks to 1944 Britain where they started their relationship. Paul notices that Elsa always has a fixed shadow, and doubts her sanity and her analyst Garven is always on her beck and call. Elsa recognises Kiel, a German ex-

POW A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war ...

working at a shoeshop, where she slept with Kiel back in 1944. But Paul believes that Kiel died, in fact there appears to be some question on whether the book's main characters themselves may not be alive...

Reception

At the time Richard P. Brickner writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' is positive "Muriel Spark's new novel is, in effect, a witty, mysterious, illuminating dream; Muriel Spark's dream, but more or less ours too. It makes reality barely more fantastic than reality is." he concludes with "A form of resolution takes place at the novel's end, something like acceptance of the past itself; but to describe it would be to flatten it. The book itself eases our own discomfort. The charmingly brutal originality with which the author has laid out her plot of pitfalls shocks us into laughing. And, narrating uncertainty with confidence, she organizes it, and us. Her book is a nightmare that's a good dream." In 2000,

Emma Brockes Emma Brockes (born 1975) is a British author and a contributor to ''The Guardian'' and ''The New York Times''. She lives in New York. Biography The daughter of a South-African-born mother,Emma Brockes"My mother's secret past" extract from ''She ...

writing in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' notes "that a bad-tempered review of the novel in 1973 called it "elliptical and dotty". The huffy reviews were possibly provoked by Spark's talent for toying with her readers' expectations. It is an approach she occasionally takes too far: at the end of Hothouse, readers discover with a dizzy plunge that all the protagonists are dead and have been since the opening page. The characters in a Spark novel are held within a symbolic order that is not altogether reliable."The genteel assassin
Retrieved 21/12/2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hothouse by the East River, The 1973 British novels Novels set in Manhattan Novels by Muriel Spark Macmillan Publishers books East River Fiction with unreliable narrators Viking Press books