A Spot of Bother
Ratings21
Average rating3.4
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.
At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased – as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.
Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.
The way these damaged people fall apart – and come together – as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.
A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon’s unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness – literally – of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.
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Zero literary pretense, all romcom potential. Too-easily devoured on a transatlantic flight.
This book makes me think of an episode of this american life that I once listened to which was about fiascos. I recall the episode describing a small-town production of Peter Pan which quickly snowballed from funny, to ridiculous, to a full blown fiasco over the period of one act. The narrator described the change in the audience as the play quickly fell apart—transitioning from a group of sympathetic and encouraging patrons, to slight discomfort for the feelings of the actors, to full out hysteria as the humour of the situation could no longer be denied. This book is a story about one family's fiasco. And towards the end, when the ball is really rolling, it takes on a life of its own. Unfortunately, the build is too slow and puts the reader in the position of discomfort for far too long. I'm not at all surprised by the number of people who stopped me while I was reading this book just to tell me that they had started it but never got into it and put it down without finishing. While I did enjoy the dark comedy of this ultimate fiasco, I don't know if the payout ultimately balances out the initial investment.
