- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; New edition edition (4 Nov 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140256946
- ISBN-13: 978-0140256949
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 779,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Spiderweb
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Stella Brentwood, retired anthropologist, has studied social systems around the world, but she finds life in rural Somerset, to which she has retired, as strange and absorbing as any she has met. She re-explores old friendships, but it is her neighbour Karen Hiscox, a fiery and aggressive woman governing her husband and sons with menacing force, who is the most unsettling presence in her new life. SPIDERWEB is an intricate mesh of letters, journal entries, classified adverts and news items which illuminate the narrative of Stella's reassessment of the relationships and journeyings which make up the spiderweb of her life.
About the Author
Penelope Lively has written many prize-winning novels and collections of short stories for both adults and children. MOON TIGER won the 1987 Booker Prize. She lives in Oxfordshire and London.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Stella is a retired anthropologist and decides she should try to put down roots at last after a long career of following the available work from country to country throughout the world. She was at Oxford at a time when it was rare, but finally acceptable, for a woman to aspire to a career and her memories of her first friend Amy, with whom she only sporadically kept in touch, are interspersed with events as she settles in a cottage in the West Country.
Along with more anodyne neighbours, there are the Hiscocks, who own a feed merchants and repairs business at the end of the lane, and Lively gives us episodes within their lives. These are unpleasant people, with a manic mother, a taciturn father and two teenaged sons who are both mistreated by their parents and, in turn, go in for setting fires and shooting animals.
Along with the nasty events that befall Stella, simply because she is there and vulnerable, the reader is subjected to disquisitions about anthropology, which are not that interesting, frankly, and memories of friends and two love affairs. Stella does not regret not getting married, and has never wanted children. She seems, perhaps inevitably, rather self-centred, though one would want to like someone who has resisted the lure of marriage and family life, the fact that she has no regrets (what, not even a little one?) seems a trifle unrealistic.
I didn't much like the protagonist, I have to say, and nor did I like the over-simplistic picture of the lower-class Hiscocks. The book left me wanting a more nuanced and explanatory account of these people. Straying out of her middle-class comfort zone is sometimes problematic for this writer.
Along with more anodyne neighbours, there are the Hiscocks, who own a feed merchants and repairs business at the end of the lane, and Lively gives us episodes within their lives. These are unpleasant people, with a manic mother, a taciturn father and two teenaged sons who are both mistreated by their parents and, in turn, go in for setting fires and shooting animals.
Along with the nasty events that befall Stella, simply because she is there and vulnerable, the reader is subjected to disquisitions about anthropology, which are not that interesting, frankly, and memories of friends and two love affairs. Stella does not regret not getting married, and has never wanted children. She seems, perhaps inevitably, rather self-centred, though one would want to like someone who has resisted the lure of marriage and family life, the fact that she has no regrets (what, not even a little one?) seems a trifle unrealistic.
I didn't much like the protagonist, I have to say, and nor did I like the over-simplistic picture of the lower-class Hiscocks. The book left me wanting a more nuanced and explanatory account of these people. Straying out of her middle-class comfort zone is sometimes problematic for this writer.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
"Her professional life had been that of a voyeur, her interest in community had been clinical..."
23 Jan 2012
Format:Paperback
(3.5 stars) Setting her novel at the end of the twentieth century, Penelope Lively begins Spiderweb (1998) by presenting a sociological picture of the west of England and the once-remote counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, now attracting new residents from "outside." A letter from Richard Faraday to Stella Brentwood regarding a property in Kingston Florey in Somerset, inserted in the midst of this picture, describes a cottage for sale and indicates that Richard has been helping Stella find such a property to purchase. Gradually, the reader learns more about Stella, a sixty-five-year-old, newly retired social anthropologist, who filters all the impressions one gains about the village and its people through her own experience as an academic specialist in social structures.
Stella has never married, not because she did not have opportunities but because she has been driven by her interests in other cultures and her desire to stay on the move, professionally. Contrasts evolve between Stella's past life and family background, her education, her friendships, and her professional excitements and the lives of her neighbors, one of whom, Karen Hiscox gives new definition to martinet, a pathological control freak who terrorizes her totally ineffective husband, her disabled mother, and her teenage sons, who have problems of their own. Stella, however, continues to believe that "West Somerset would cheerfully bare its soul to her..."
The independent Stella must ultimately find her excitement and mental stimulation in her life in the community, in her phone calls from friends, and in her memories of the past, including past loves. She tries, but her brain will not quit long enough for her to allow her emotions to flourish. She gets a dog from the rescue agency, but the dog adores her to much, and she finds herself uncomfortable with such overwhelming love. She has a suitor, but she cannot disconnect him from what she knew of him in the past. She compares this man to the love of her life, a journalist she met in Malta many years ago, and the man in the Orkney Islands who begged her to marry him. Ultimately, she realizes that her life here is a "web," and its connections may also bind and destroy.
The author, in creating a gossipy and initially cheerful commentary on village life, makes us empathize with Stella, even as we are ready to throttle her, sympathize even as we recognize she is perhaps hopelessly obtuse. We see her actions with a kind of dark humor, even as we may feel guilty for feeling judgmental. The reader recognizes elements of foreshadowing which underlie the behavior of the local people around her, but Stella, the anthropologist, is not privy to the same information and has no way of ever learning it. Ironies, such as these, give the story a kind of universality which broadens the scope beyond the limits of Kingston Florey and offer commentary on what it takes to be a "successful" person. Stella, at sixty-five, has squandered her chance to experience a full life, at least by the standards of most of the rest of the world, and whether she is or can be truly happy is not clear. Whether or not she really cares is an even bigger question. Mary Whipple
Stella has never married, not because she did not have opportunities but because she has been driven by her interests in other cultures and her desire to stay on the move, professionally. Contrasts evolve between Stella's past life and family background, her education, her friendships, and her professional excitements and the lives of her neighbors, one of whom, Karen Hiscox gives new definition to martinet, a pathological control freak who terrorizes her totally ineffective husband, her disabled mother, and her teenage sons, who have problems of their own. Stella, however, continues to believe that "West Somerset would cheerfully bare its soul to her..."
The independent Stella must ultimately find her excitement and mental stimulation in her life in the community, in her phone calls from friends, and in her memories of the past, including past loves. She tries, but her brain will not quit long enough for her to allow her emotions to flourish. She gets a dog from the rescue agency, but the dog adores her to much, and she finds herself uncomfortable with such overwhelming love. She has a suitor, but she cannot disconnect him from what she knew of him in the past. She compares this man to the love of her life, a journalist she met in Malta many years ago, and the man in the Orkney Islands who begged her to marry him. Ultimately, she realizes that her life here is a "web," and its connections may also bind and destroy.
The author, in creating a gossipy and initially cheerful commentary on village life, makes us empathize with Stella, even as we are ready to throttle her, sympathize even as we recognize she is perhaps hopelessly obtuse. We see her actions with a kind of dark humor, even as we may feel guilty for feeling judgmental. The reader recognizes elements of foreshadowing which underlie the behavior of the local people around her, but Stella, the anthropologist, is not privy to the same information and has no way of ever learning it. Ironies, such as these, give the story a kind of universality which broadens the scope beyond the limits of Kingston Florey and offer commentary on what it takes to be a "successful" person. Stella, at sixty-five, has squandered her chance to experience a full life, at least by the standards of most of the rest of the world, and whether she is or can be truly happy is not clear. Whether or not she really cares is an even bigger question. Mary Whipple
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the thousands of books I have read there are but a handful that I don't finnish and this is one of them. I persevered to about halfway until I decided that the characters were so dull that I did not care in the least what happened to them. There are so many good books out there please don't waste any time on this one.
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