Customer Reviews

A Spot of Bother

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Mark Haddon had quite a challenge coming off of the quirky, wonderful "Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-time." How could you possibly follow that up? Haddon takes the noble approach by trying a different tact this time around; while "Incident" was seen solely from the point of view of one person (who just happened to be autistic), "Bother" takes on an entire family whose lives get shaken up in the weeks before the daughter's wedding. It's a very different approach that thankfully keeps Haddon's quirky sense of humor. Haddon also challenges himself by presenting us with some deeply shallow, selfish characters that for the first hundred pages are pretty severely unlikable. I was thoroughly convinced that there was no way I could ever care what happens to such wretched people, but Haddon proved me wrong. First, let's meet them: there's the matriarch, Jean, who has been having an affair with a former colleague of her husband; Jamie, the gay son, who has just been dumped by the boyfriend he stubbornly refused to invite to the wedding to meet his family; daughter Katie, whose nuptials may be cancelled because she can't decide if she loves her fiance or not; and George, the patriarch who suffers a complete mental breakdown after retirement and the appearance of a lesion on his hip (the titular spot of bother). Jean, Jamie, and Katie start out completely insufferable, but after the first hundred pages they have been forced to re-examine their lives and become determined to be better people. They discover their softer, more human sides and set about righting the wrongs they have committed. In no time at all I was hopelessly caught up rooting for them to get their lives back on track. George has the opposite problem: he has always been relatively stable, if emotionally distant. Caught up in a passed-mid-life crisis, he completely unravels. It is utterly fascinating -- and scarily realistic --to witness his descent into madness, and it gives the family drama a powerful edge that makes it all the more resonant. In the end I thoroughly enjoyed "A Spot of Bother" and its characters. And I really can't wait to see what Haddon comes up with next.

Following up a book of rare excellence like Mr. Haddon's first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is difficult. Seeing the world through the eyes of an autistic child like Christopher John Francis Boone is a real revelation. Seeing the world through the growing madness of George Hall in A Spot of Bother may not be the same but it is a worthy successor.

And, let's face it, George may be the one going clinically insane here, but he is surrounded by a family that could certainly try any man's nerves: a wife cheating on him with a former co-worker, an argumentative daughter marrying a man she's not sure she loves and a gay son who has trouble sustaining relationships. Haddon's success in this novel is that he manages all this madness in a way that seems very real.

To be honest, he handles it in such a realistic way that the first third of the novel is a bit of a slog. Interesting in the sense that you are getting to know these characters but trying in the sense that you are waiting for something more to happen. Then, around page 100, events start to accelerate and they don't let up until the final explosion and the wedding reception at the end of the novel (foreshadowed nicely, I might add, by real fireworks--the kind that explode in colors in the sky).

Far be it from me to give away any of the actual events. Needless to say, he pushes the boundaries of believability but doesn't quite break them. If there is a problem here, it's that everyone else except the four adults in this family seem so normal while they struggle with each other's craziness. But, then again, maybe that's how the world seems when we compare our families to the world at large. Which may be why this novel is fun to read.

I loved "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," and I didn't think "A Spot of Bother" could possibly live up to its predecessor. I was wrong. Amazingly, Mark Haddon's second book is even more brilliant than his first one. It also has a completely different feel to it than Haddon's first book, which makes it even more impressive.

"A Spot of Bother" is a hilarious look at the life of a dysfunctional British family. There's George, a recent retiree who is convinced that his eczema is actually cancer and slowly starts losing his mind. George's wife, Jean, is secretly having an affair with her husband's former colleague, David. Jamie, George and Jean's son, doesn't think his parents have accepted the fact that he's gay, and he's also having major problems with his boyfriend, Tony. Katie, George and Jean's daughter, has a young child from her disastrous first marriage and is about to marry Ray, a man that no one in her family can stand.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a comical farce with plenty of laughs, but it's also a touching family tale that all readers will probably be able to relate to on some level (which is a scary thought). I can't wait to see what Haddon writes next.

Haddon's trademark wit--an improbable mixture of acerbic wisecracks and compassionate quips--is alive and well in A Spot of Bother. Here, Haddon proves himself to be a masterful story-teller and not just a one-shot wonder. He makes the mundane seem miraculous and embraces the often ugly complexities of family life. Each family member is imbued with both innocuous foibles and categorical flaws, and the book, like its defective characters, comes together as a cohesive unit. It's kind of like Little Miss Sunshine--but better.

From A Spot of Bother: A Novel:

"If he were given the choice he would rather someone had broken his leg. You did not have to explain what was wrong with a broken leg. Nor were you expected to mend it by force of will.

...

What he felt mostly was a relentless, grinding dread which rumbled and thundered and made the world dark, like those spaceships in science-fiction films whose battle-scorched fuselages slid onto the screen and kept on sliding onto the screen because they were, in fact, several thousand times larger than you expected when all you could see was the nose cone.

The idea of genuinely having cancer was beginning to seem almost a relief, the idea of going into hospital, having tubes put into his arm, being told what to do by doctors and nurses, no longer having to grapple with the problem of getting through the next five minutes."

Mark Haddon's follow up novel to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time is another sort of exploration into the darker, more obscure regions of the human mind. Instead of an adolescent main character with Asperger's Syndrome, in A Spot of Bother Haddon portrays a 61-year old who begins to think he's losing his mind shortly after finding a mysterious skin lesion on his hip.

George Hall is convinced he has cancer, and that there's nothing that can be done for him. He's plunged into a dark, confusing sort of despair in which the world seems to wobble on its axis, throwing life as he knew it into an alternate nightmarish dimension. Fear overtakes him, often crippling him, and he begins having panic attacks he believes are a further proof of the cancer he's convinced himself is ravaging him.

Meanwhile, his daughter is planning her second marriage to a man he and his wife disapprove of. His wife is having an affair with a former colleague of his, and his homosexual son lurks like an unsolved problem in the background.

George Hall is falling apart.

Mark Haddon's second novel is stellar. It's at times riotously funny, deeply empathetic and peopled with characters the reader comes to identify with so closely it's not surprising to find yourself actually worrying about them. Well, at least I hope it's not surprising to find yourself worrying about fictional characters!

Perhaps I've just hit on fodder for Mark Haddon's third novel, devoted to the notion that readers can actually come to care so much for fictional characters they build a delusional world around them.

All royalty checks accepted, Mr. Haddon.

A Spot of Bother is a book not to be missed. Thanks so much to Doubleday for sending me a review copy of this book.

I thought the book was well written, but I simply did not like the characters. I just didn't care for the story. I give him 3 stars for his ability to write well but only 1 for the story.

I absolutely loved the Curious Incident so I was quite eager to read this and was disappointed - wouldn't recommend it.

I will definitely give the author another chance when his next book comes out because I think there is great potential.

Following up on his brilliant 1st novel, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, with A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon has demonstrated that he has mastered the understanding of the human heart and psyche. In Curious Incident, he captured the essence of autism, opening up a window into the mind of a teenager with that mysterious condition. In Bother, Haddon tackles depression and anxiety, with surprising insight, humor, and compassion. Without explicit analysis, Haddon depicts the remarkable way in which common human fears can disguise themselves as something quite different. George is the family member with the most disturbing problem, but his wife, son, and daughter are grappling with serious life-stage issues of their own. As George tumbles deeper and deeper into his private, irrational dark hole, Jean tries to recapture the excitement of her youth, Katie struggles with a dependence/independence conflict, and Jamie must come to terms with his sexuality and fear of commitment. All of their problems explode at Katie's wedding, in a comical, poignant, worst case scenario of a resolution. Beautifully written, right on the money story about the fears with which we all grapple at some point in our personal journeys. Warmly recommended.

"A Spot of Bother" certainly wasn't what I expected, not that I had any expection other than that the book would have well turned phrases and wry humor. I had read "The Curious Incident..." shortly after it was published and before it became such a success. It was an unexpected joy to read. "A Spot of Bother" was not. I certainly did laugh out loud occasionally in public places as I read it, and it did keep me engaged enough to be finished in a few days, but all in all it was not a pleasant read. The spot of bother in the title is the main character's perception of what is happening to him in the midst of a complete and multi-faceted breakdown. It was like watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm in which one thing after another inevitably and frustratingly goes wrong in a somewhat humorous way ---except that what is going wrong here is intense depression, self-mutilation, extreme hypochondria, prescription drug overdoses---sort of serious subjects. That it all finally ends in a just peachy way is not reassuring.

While the book does read well, there were times that I felt that Mark Haddon is such a talented writer that he was writing for an audience this time. There are twists and turns constantly like in one of those popular ensemble acted television shows. And there are cleverly written notions about life just often enough so that I began to feel manipulated. I never once even thought about an author when I read Curious Incident. I was too absorbed and amused.

Anyway, despite all of that and despite the somewhat depressing story for anyone mildly awake, I enjoyed it, but if there was a sequel I wouldn't touch it. This for me is a 4, which relative speaking it should be, but then I guess Curious Incident was a 5 plus.

Author Mark Haddon has a distinct way of shaping protagonists around some personal limitation that one would think would alienate the reader from the outset of his stories. His wonderful novel, 2003's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", has an autistic, mathematically obsessed 15-year old at the core of a murder mystery, while Haddon's new book focuses on George Hall, an initially befuddled, 61-year old retiree losing his grip on reality. The checkered story follows the increasingly paranoid George as he deals with a most dysfunctional family. His hot-tempered, anal-retentive divorced daughter Katie has decided to marry the boorish, unpopular Ray. George's son Jamie is gay and still struggling with his identity as he ponders bringing longtime carpenter boyfriend Tony to the wedding. George's wife Jean has embarked on an affair with his former co-worker David. On top of all this, George is convinced he is dying, even though his doctor insists a spot on his hip is just eczema.

Haddon dexterously cross-cuts among these characters by having each provide his or her perspective in quick chapters that bounce with lots of comic energy. However, the author's biggest accomplishment is the vivid depiction of George's encroaching wave of dread, entertaining thoughts of suicide, while his family encircles him with their own self-pity. There is no sacrifice of the idiosyncratic, humanizing details Haddon provides in his first novel, such as Katie's need to straighten pens that are laid against the grain of a wooden coffee table or her two-year old son Jacob's moves toward emancipation in the bathroom department. What is somewhat lacking is the constantly quirky invention of "Curious Incident", as this one focuses so completely on the extended Hall family. In fact, Haddon reverses the normal dynamics of such family sagas by making the outer characters like Tony and David the most sympathetic since they get caught circumstantially in the orbit of self-destruction. In tone and sustained humor, the book reminds me quite a bit of the 2002 film version of Louis Begley's "About Schmidt". Highly recommended.

The problem of having written a piece a of genius like "The curious incident..." is that your next book is going to be evaluated against high standards. So it is a remarkable achievement that "A spot of bother" does not only not disappoint, but even lives up to the expectations.

The story tells a family drama centered around the troubled buildup to the marriage of the daughter of the family. While the wedding is cancelled and later un-cancelled, the gay son faces existential questions after a break-up, the mother does not quite know what to think of her extramarital affair, the father discovers a lesion and gets depressed from fear of dying, and so the characters hobble towards the end. No heroism, no great romantic love or deep philosophy, no bad guys: this book should be very boring...
And yet, the great craftsmanship of Haddon is that in it's everydayness, the book has all the drama of people dealing with life's setbacks, triumphs, and the existential doubts that we all feel. The masterful writing certainly helps: Haddon has the ability to make a scene at the same time hilariously funny and very tragic. The dialogues are great and the multi-person perspective works very well, as does the touch of absurdity here and there.

I cannot give it five stars, because after all it is not "The curious incident..." , but I can guarantee you some addictive reading!