A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

The Abingdon Lite at Night book group read A Spot of Bother for their June meeting. With our Spot of Bother we had a spot of English Tea - PG Tips, England's most popular everyday tea.

If you read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, you may or may not like his latest novel. Criticism in the US and the UK has been mixed, although generally positive. His previous novel was so different that it was obviously a hard act to follow. The Curious Incident is the story of a teen-age autistic boy who decides to solve the mystery of the murdered dog he finds in his garden. Haddon's Spot of Bother is the story of George Hall and his disfunctional family. George is a retired father of two grown children, Katie, who has a young son Jacob, and Jamie, who is gay. Katie and Jamie are both having relationship issues. George's wife, Jean, is having an affair. Meanwhile, George, who is an inoffensive individual, discovers he has a skin disorder that he believes to be cancer. As he begins to go quietly insane, his family and their problems whirl around him.

Comments from the group ranged from funny to depressing, difficult to follow to very interesting. They thought the book was well written. It provoked discussion about how families deal with depression in loved ones, and the difficulties of relationships among the young and single, as well as the mature and married.

This is what Publisher's Weekly had to say about A Spot of Bother.

Recent retiree George Hall, convinced that his eczema is cancer, goes into a tailspin in Haddon's (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) laugh-out-loud slice of British domestic life. George, 61, is clearly channeling a host of other worries into the discoloration on his hip (the "spot of bother"): daughter Katie, who has a toddler, Jacob, from her disastrous first-marriage to the horrid Graham, is about to marry the equally unlikable Ray; inattentive wife Jean is having an affair—with George's former co-worker, David Symmonds; and son Jamie doesn't think George is OK with Jamie's being queer. Haddon gets into their heads wonderfully, from Jean's waffling about her affair to Katie's being overwhelmed (by Jacob, and by her impending marriage) and Jamie's takes on men (and boyfriend Tony in particular, who wants to come to the wedding). Mild-mannered George, meanwhile, despairing over his health, slinks into a depression; his major coping strategies involve hiding behind furniture on all fours and lowing like a cow. It's an odd, slight plot—something like the movie Father of the Bride crossed with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (as skin rash)—but it zips along, and Haddon subtly pulls it all together with sparkling asides and a genuine sympathy for his poor Halls. No bother at all, this comic follow-up to Haddon's blockbuster (and nicely selling book of poems) is great fun. (Sept.)