cover image Spider

Spider

Patrick McGrath. Vintage Books USA, $13 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-679-73630-1

In this ``closely observed study of madness, memory and storytelling'' the delusional Dennis Clegg, aka Spider, returns to his London neighborhood after 20 years in a mental hospital and insists that his father, not he, murdered his mother. ``An admixture of Poe and the comic vulnerabilities of Beckett, this tale lingers long and disturbingly in the mind,'' said PW. (Oct.)