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John Hartley Williams has published six poetry collections, most recently Spending Time with Walter (2001). He teaches English at the Free University of Berlin, where he has been since 1976. This is his first novel.
Let's get one thing straight, right from the outset: this is not a whodunnit, whatever the charmingly dated cover illustration would have you believe. But it is a mystery, and the mystery is - what on earth's going on? The narrator remains anonymous, and is perhaps more than one person. Spiderville is a district in an unnamed city where Spider Rembrandt is a detective. Spider, by the way, removes all his internal organs at night, winds his intestine up neatly, hangs his skin on a tree and sleeps in a grave wearing only his skeleton. This book is a surreal essay rather than a story, whose weird plotline might have been fuelled by absinthe in 19th-century Paris. Shortly into it, Spider explains his raison d'etre: 'On a diet of gold dust, oysters, virgins' lower lips, wild-boar truffles, plovers' eggs scented with spring garlic, the pizzles of young Highland cattle, the circumcised bits of female babies, how could I be otherwise than a man of enterprise?' Get the idea? This is a luscious wallow in language, executed with lazy brilliance. If a fast-paced airport read is what you're after, this book would be something of a foolish purchase. But for leisured readers of a dreamy and philosophical turn of mind, John Hartley Williams offers a baffling world of unfathomable erotic decadence in an impressive prose poem. That is the mystery of Spiderville, and the choice is up to you. (Kirkus UK)
