Tearing a passion to tatters
Lucy Beresford
DEATH TRAP by Patrice Chaplin Duckworth. 114.99, pp. 220, ISBN 0715632159 Death Trap is a torrid tale of vampiric, lesbian lust. Having piqued your interest, I should perhaps elaborate: this is a novel charting the harrowing course of a dysfunctional, abusive, mutually dependent relationship which, were that not enough, sadly also lacks conviction.
Catherine, a married photographer at the start of her career (and a recovering alcoholic), finds herself in Les Frontieres, a mediaeval backwater in northern Spain, the kind of place where not even the local bus-driver can get by without a drink. There she meets Elle who, 'like a galleon in full sail', sweeps into the village accompanied by Mia, a willowy blonde with pain in her eyes; a coupling which has had the tongues of the bored village locals wagging for some time. Believing she has known Elle all her life, Catherine falls helplessly into an unexpected infatuation which will have as devastating consequences on her marriage and sanity as it had on my patience. Not only is Elle an enigmatic Svengali (wealthy, manipulative, and prone to tantrums with people she considers her inferiors), she has a penchant for digging her nails into Catherine's flesh and licking the blood. Playing one woman off against the other, she attempts to abandon the increasingly fragile Mia, and whisks Catherine off to America, where she claims to be able to arrange photo-shoots with film-stars and meetings with financiers to back Catherine's pet project of making a film about 'cities at night'. Catherine (unable to tolerate Elle's, how shall we say, divided loyalties, and the lack of sexual consummation in their affair), endures emotional paralysis and physical meltdown. So all-consuming is her 'love' that, by the end of the novel, she becomes the object of her own obsession.
Chaplin understands well the sadomasochistic qualities inherent in addiction and the violent intoxication of obsessive love, but her novel is deeply flawed, Chaplin has Catherine reach the pitch of tortured victim far too quickly, and the scenes of hysterical anger, followed swiftly (due to abandonment fears) by guilt and contrition, are too repetitious to be dramatically effective. For a novel 'obsessed' with light and shade (photographic 'dark room', Hollywood sunshine), there is no subtlety, and therefore little conviction, to the portrayal of Catherine's psychic breakdown, Anything significant that the book has to say — about the nature of sexual jealousy, emotional possession, inadequate parenting, and the moral vacuum behind a facade of wealth — is undercut by ugly sentences, such as 'she couldn't shrug big enough.' Repeated similes (twice describing sexual longing as like an animal on heat), and a sprinkling of crudely symbolic dreams, weaken the book further.
Abusive relationships like this exist, and Chaplin deserves much praise for tackling the subject head-on. Sadly, for all the energy in her writing, I didn't believe in these particular characters or their relationships. Madness is fiendishly difficult to recreate successfully in fiction, and Chaplin, by trying too hard, has fallen into the trap.
When Tatu, Russia's famous 'lesbian' pop duo, reached number one in Britain with the single All the Things She Said, their success owed perhaps more to its steamy accompanying video and the hype surrounding the girls' sexual ambiguity than to their vocal talents. I rather suspect Chaplin's latest novel might enjoy a certain success for similar, spurious reasons.
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