A Spot of Bother
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By Mark Haddon
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‘A painful funny humane novel: beautifully written, addictively readable and so confident’ The Times
Discover this brilliantly comic and moving bestselling novel by the award-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Porpoise.
At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray.
The 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 way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband’s former 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.
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St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 24th June 2019.
A spot of bother. Mark Haddon.
There were very differing opinions about this book amongst the reading group, mainly over the question of humour. Some found it extremely funny (though more in the writing style than the subjects discussed); others saw no humour in it at all.
Arising out of the book, we discussed the way that children are brought up, and the merits and demerits of too much leniency; and we talked about weddings as a focus for family arguments and dramas.
Criticisms of the narrative were that it was overly melodramatic; that George's attitude to his son's sexual orientation was old-fashioned; and the characters were silly, dysfunctional, or pathetic.
Positive comments were that the book was heart-warming its depiction of a family who started off as separate, inward-looking individuals and gradually began to think about each other; that various characters (particularly the little boy and the initially unwelcome son-in-law) were very convincing; and that the book was attempting a discussion of the recognition of clinical depression.
Some of the group had read Mark Haddon's first book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and we briefly discussed that – the general impression was that A Spot of Bother was slightly less well received than The Curious Incident.
