“Pando,” he repeats flatly, closing his eyes. “I spread. In Latin, Pando means ‘I spread.’”
I don’t know if I could exactly be called a fan of Iain Reid’s, but We Spread is the third novel I’ve read of his — the third novel that I ended wondering, “Is that three stars? Five stars? How does one rate something so ephemeral?” — and once again, the reading pleasure is all in the moment: the unsettled, uncanny heebie-jeebies all dissipate like a wisp of smoke as soon as the last page is turned. I was completely invested for the couple of hours this took to read, but I’m left with little. Even so, that’s not a worthless experience to me and I’ll read the author again (does that make me a fan?) This time around, Reid presents a bit of a horror story about the loneliness and helplessness of ageing, and to say any more than that would be to spoil the experience for others (but I will say a bit more later in this review; forewarned for mild spoilers), and I guess I’ll settle on a qualified four stars for the in-the-moment reading experience. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I am near the end now, and I am alone. Very old and very much alone. I have been both for some time, surrounded by the listless stacks and heavy piles of a life already lived: vinyl records, empty flowerpots, clothing, dishes, photo albums, magazines about art, drawings, letters from friends, the library of paperback books lining my shelves. It’s no wonder I’m stuck in the past, thinking about him, our days together, how our relationship started and how it ended. I feel enveloped by the past. I’ve lived here in the same apartment for more than fifty years. The man I moved here with, the man I spent more time with over my life than anyone else, would tell me in private moments, right here in the apartment, while lying in our bed, that my being too sensitive would be my demise.
Penny has been living alone in her apartment for years since the death of her partner, but as she approaches ninety, she struggles with loneliness and taking care of herself. When she has a bad fall, her landlord says that it’s time for Penny to move into the assisted living facility she and her partner had prearranged for her — but Penny doesn’t remember ever hearing about this plan before, and even as they drive up to the isolated mansion in the woods (very Gothic vibes of Rebecca or The Haunting of Hill House), it’s impossible to tell if Penny is suffering from dementia or if she’s being gaslighted by the landlord who had recently been her only friend. And as the reader is stuck in Penny’s POV, her reality is reality, her paranoia and confusion seem reasonable, and Reid does make horror out of the situation. As Penny loses time and has people quoting back to her things she doesn’t remember saying, is it more likely that she’s being drugged and exploited for some kind of an experiment, or that she’s experiencing infrequent moments of lucidity in a dementia fog? Both explanations seem plausible — and particularly since the reader might expect something off-kilter from Reid — but we are trapped in Penny’s subjective experience and her creeping sense of horror is very real. All well done and poses an uncomfortable question about eldercare.
Jack is gone, but I keep replaying what he said, that I’ll never be alone again, that I’m being protected from being an elderly woman. That’s what he said. Did he also say that forgetting is good? But at what cost? At what cost am I being protected from my age?
My mother-in-law suffered with Alzheimers, and when I’d visit her assisted living facility, sometimes she’d introduce me as an old friend, and sometimes she’d call me by name and ask how my girls were doing. She was never angry or paranoid, but she was often sad and couldn’t express why and it is a bit horrifying to imagine her experience was like Penny’s: inexplicable time jumps (my MIL often asked her daughter why she didn’t visit more often when she rarely missed a day), living in the moment with no idea how you got there, wanting to go home without recognising the house you lived in for thirty years. This is the stuff of horror. But since We Spread was written by Iain Reid, there was a plausibility to Penny’s fears — being spied on, being used for experiments, something something fungus and symbiosis — and while I was trying to predict what the twist might be, I might not have been truly appreciating the reality of Penny’s actual experience. When the ending came, I did retroactively recognise everything that Reid set up along the way (even that code spelling out O-R-T-U-S delighted me), and this was definitely well crafted, but it might take a reread — a blank mind without expectations — to truly see what Reid is showing us. Okay, writing about it cleared up my reaction; I guess I’m a fan.
