A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon is well known as the author of the acclaimed novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. For some reason I've never quite got around to it, so my introduction to this author is through his second novel, A Spot of Bother.

A Spot of Bother is the tragi-comic tale of George Hall – 61, recently retired, contemplating a life of comfortable dullness when he discovers a weird looking lesion on his hip and immediately jumps to the conclusion that he is going to imminently die of skin cancer.

Add into the mix that he finds it almost impossible to talk to his wife Jean about personal matters, his extremely opinionated daughter Katie is set on marrying Ray, a match her parents think is totally unsuitable, and the wedding means they’ll have to extend an invitation to his son Jamie’s boyfriend Tony. All in all, George begins to find retirement just a tad stressful and as the family situation escalates, George’s mental state gradually morphs from stress into anxiety and finally into full blown paranoia and instability.

None of the above sounds like a fun time and yes, there are times when I wanted to either wrap George in a fleecy blanket or hit him around the head so he’d actually talk about what he’s going through. That aside, I really enjoyed this book. One huge thing that it has going for it is that Mark Haddon has genuine affection for his characters. He writes them kindly, even when they are doing stupid stuff and it made me read them with a compassionate eye, as if these were people who you might actually know and want to help, so long as you could be sure you weren’t going to be sucked into the maelstrom of their particular domestic madness.

One of the things I found of particular interest is that while this is a multi-character point of view story, and each chapter makes it very clear who’s PoV we are in, the one person who doesn’t get a first-person PoV is Ray, Katie’s ‘deeply inappropriate’ future husband. This is obviously a deliberate choice by Haddon and what makes it interesting is that we only see Ray through other characters' eyes and pretty soon come to realise that he’s probably the most sensible, decent character in the whole book. Yes he’s got issues, he’s a plain-spoken northern man in midst of a southern family (which is a bit of a trope, but it’s exactly the reason why the family feel he’s inappropriate), but Ray is straightforward and emotionally honest (at least most of the time) compared to the emotional confusion the rest of the family are in and he acts as an excellent mirror in which to view the action.

I’ve read that A Spot of Bother had a lukewarm reception from some critics who thought Haddon wasn’t living up to the promise he’d shown with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But as others have pointed out, if he’d written something similar, he’d have been lambasted for being a one-trick pony so really it was probably a no-win situation.

I can only speak for myself and I really enjoyed A Spot of Bother. The characters are extremely well drawn, their emotions feel real to their various situations and confusions and the chaos that comes with planning a family wedding will resonate with oh so many people. Haddon addresses questions about love and friendship, family obligation and the emotional constipation of the English (and in this case I do mean ‘English') that makes all these issues so much harder to navigate than they should be. And at the heart of it all, George’s fear of dying, his inability to communicate his fear and his silent mental breakdown in the midst of family chaos is portrayed with kindness, affection and no little comic exasperation which is balanced nicely by a genuinely sympathetic approach to George's fears.

It is one of those books that just finishes. In fact for a moment I thought I was missing a page or two at the end, but on reflection it feels right that a book about family life should end in the midst of a small moment of domesticity that is satisfying after the emotional roller coaster of the previous chapters.

I read A Spot of Bother over two days and thoroughly enjoyed it. I may now seek out the much lauded The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and see if I think that critically acclaimed novel lives up to its reputation.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon was first published in 2006 and my edition was published by Vintage.