Product Description

George Hall doesn't 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 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. 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 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. The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Mark Haddon's disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3173 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Evening Standard: Rev'd Catherine Shoard
`It's a resolutely unpretentious read: drily, almost flatly funny,
but with a deep, sharp humanity...'

The Independent
One of the '50 best holiday reads'

The Daily Telegraph
'[a] comedy of suburban manners'

Customer Reviews

The Curiously Good Second Novel
Mark Haddon, damn him, has written a second novel which is better than the first. It isn't LIKE the first one, the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, so ignore the reviewers below who seem to think that like a brand name, an author's name should guarantee an identical experience every time. This time Haddon approaches a superficially ordinary family, perhaps like yours or mine, and goes into the little crises and difficulties which make family life so hard to bear. Dad may be an alcoholic, may be a hypochondriac, may be going mad.... you make your own decision as you read his narrative of the family going through weddings, arrivals and departures, illnesses and just day to day coping. But the style is distinctively, freshly, hilariously Haddon and very recognisable as the work of the same hand.

A riotously funny look into the lives of ordinary people
This book has been criticized by some reviewers because its characters are too ordinary. This is the very quality that makes the book such a delight for me. The book exposes a family dealing with aging and retirement, a homosexual son, marriage and relationship difficulties and the opinions of the world around them. The dilemmas faced by these ordinary characters are familiar to us all, but Haddon's humorous and insightful treatment of them can be quite thought-provoking.

The book is riotously funny. Haddon's metaphors and similes alone will have you in stitches and dying to try them out yourself to show what a witty conversationalist you are. Let me give you an example:

"George could do the bluff repartee about cars and sport if pressed. But it was like being a sheep in the nativity play".

A thoroughly enjoyable read. You will finish it in a few nights.

Touching and funny.
The central character of 'A Spot Of Bother' is George Hall, a 57-year-old man from Peterborough, recently retired and a touch overwhelmed by his newly discovered wealth of free time. Other people we meet and follow are George's wife Jean, who is having an affair with one of George's ex-co-workers; their son Jamie, who is having relationship problems of his own; and their daughter Katie who is about to get married to Ray, a man none of the family are sure about and who Katie does not appear to be madly in love with. The book's narrative follows one character at a time, allowing the reader to see events from everyone's point of view.

Plot-wise, the book it pretty simple - Katie and Ray are to get married at George and Jean's home, and everything must be organised - Jamie has to patch things up with his boyfriend, Katie has to decide whether she really wants to get married ... and George catches Jean with her lover, fears he is dying of cancer and thus begins to go mad.

Haddon's genius is to occupy the minds of the different characters in an entirely believable (and readable) manner, from the doubts of Katie's impending marriage to Jamie's love for his partner to the madness of King George, the head of the family. It's a difficult book to put down once begun, and although a light read on some levels nonetheless satisfying - the stand-out sections being those eloquent yet terrifying descriptions of George's descent into madness.