Breeding Ground

I was afraid I was going to hate this book, and I was right. Still, I have to say I hated it for unexpected reasons.

I have a horror of spiders, in fact I would say that I’m a certified arachnophobiac, so it was with no small amount of dread that I began reading this book. Still, I didn’t really fear the “widows” as initially depicted. It was only when our band of survivors reached the military compound and mention was made of the legions of spiders in the trees that I started to find the spiders at all menacing.

I found the description of the humans mutating into spiders way more horrifying than the spiders themselves. I think this was because the author devoted significantly more time to fleshing out the description of Dave, Katie and even Neil’s respective mutations than she did to depicting the spiders. I believe this was a good decision on the author’s part; it was far creepier to think of humans transforming into spiders from within. It literally made my skin crawl.

Now that I’ve addressed what I felt made this book scary and therefore effective, I have to repeat: I hated this book. I thought the way every female in the book was depicted was misogynistic and revealed the author’s apparent distaste for her own gender.

Let’s start with Chloe. I realize she gets fat and give birth to a widow but while I find her transformation repugnant, I found Matt’s reaction to it to be more so. He closes off from her emotionally almost from the get go. While I can’t stress enough how much I sympathize with what he experiences, I found his lack of grief at the death of his wife to be appalling.

Further, like many of my fellow students in this course have posted, I found Matt’s willingness to hop into bed with every female of age he encountered reprehensible. You’d think after seeing what happened to Chloe, he’d have been more gun shy in regard to the so-called fairer sex, but he starts eyeballing and flirting with Katie almost upon meeting her and Jane. Then, even after Katie’s transformation and subsequent suicide, this on the heels of his own wife’s demise, he sees fit to fall in love/lust with Rebecca and impregnates her. What’s even more bizarre is when he finds out Rebecca is pregnant, he is happy about it! This blew my mind. You’d have thought he’d have been more concerned she’d give birth to a spider, too.

Women aside, I didn’t find any of the male characters in this novel to be particularly sympathetic or engaging. Nigel was obviously a prick and got exactly what he deserved; of course, the author reminded us of this at every turn. Other than Nigel, none of the male characters were very memorable.

In conclusion, this novel made my skin crawl which I suppose is a bit of a testament to the author’s prowess as a horror novelist, but for the most part I had to force myself to finish it. The story didn’t initially draw me in and nothing in the text as I kept reading redeemed this book for me. I can say with no small amount of conviction that I would never reread this book or suggest it to a friend.