A Spot of Bother

Jonathan Turner of Waterstone's, Darlington on A Spot of Bother :

"I developed a strange affliction while I was reading this book. I  started wanting to read it out loud to whoever was around me at the  time. That was fine when it was my wife, but it wasn't so good on the  train. There were just so many bits that I thought were worth quoting.  I only laughed out loud twice but he's got such an easy and amusing  style I wanted to share it with others."

This is Mark Haddon's follow-up to his amazing debut, The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time - a mordant, darkly humorous look at family relationships, which is almost uncomfortably true-to-life as it allows the reader to look into the everyday life of George, and the impact on his family as his mind gradually unravels in a miasma of paranoia.

If you've already read the book, we'd love to hear your opinions on it. If not, why not pick up a copy today and join the discussion later?

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Comments

[sharon rowe]

I too found that I wanted to read bits of this book aloud.

[Helen P Siddall]

This was a truly enjoyable book, interesting and awfully funny. I use the word awfully intentionally. Poor George! The whole family is in a state of crisis but basically George is the unseen tragic figure. Since he's retired, he's down the garden constructing, where he has plenty of time to think and plenty of time to worry. Unfortunately, I think I might find a 'George' in every town. He could be anybody's father, husband, brother. He's gone haywire, quietly but graphically. I just can't get the scissors out of my mind. I can feel it. I howled when he head-butted Jean's lover. The circumstances and location couldn't have been worse but what a retaliation. Poor Katie and Poor Jean! It's a story that could be about any modern family, any set of people who are living on the edge. Mark Haddon has written a gem and I loved every page of it.

[Karen Sykes]

I did enjoy this book but I have to say I was not tempted to just read sections of it out loud nor did I find it so funny that I laughed out loud. It was amusing in places and I do think that comedy element of it was needed to lighten what was quite a sad and unhappy story. It would have been too heavy going and depressing without the humour.

I did feel sorry for George but not as much as I did for his children - their struggles in their relationships were as a result of their parents need to keep up appearances rather than care for the family's emotional well being throughout their lives. Georges illness was born in part of this same need to bury everything for the sake of appearances. I was very pleased that Katie and Jamie managed to throw off the baggage their parents had given them and find their way to love and the beginnings of great relationships. Along the way they tried to help their parents who, unlike their children, were just at the start of a rocky road as the book came to a close.

Jean I had no sympathy with at all throughout the whole book. I thought she was the most selfish of characters as no doubt she was intended to be. I did think the ending was rather kind to her.

[S Jackson]

I did enjoy the book both the style and the content, but, I did think it was a 'standard' book and I read somewhere before somebody likening it to a radio 4 play which I agree with, nothing really unique, but a good, almost realist portrayal of families. A light, easy summer read I thought.

[Elaine Dingsdale]

Thought this was an interesting novel, and I particularly loved the alternation between comedy and more serious moments. Not sure how accurate the portrayal of mental illness is, having had no personal experience of it, but some of George’s scenes and thoughts were profoundly moving-in particular, when he was wandering alone through the countryside prior to the wedding, which struck me as more moving than the infamous bathroom scene!
I felt the male characters were by far the more likeable-Ray in particular, struck me as getting a rather rough deal. He emerged as a thoroughly decent person, supportive against the odds, whose only fault appeared to be that he was “potential husband no 2”. I was also impressed with the portrait drawn of the relationship between Ray and Jacob, which was genuinely moving. Much of my sympathies were reserved for Jamie, in his struggle to confront his parents with his homosexuality: how we hope that his relationship will work out!
By contrast, the female characters are not particularly likeable at all-as Karen said, Jean was lucky in the end! I couldn’t actually imagine what attraction David found in her, and I was rather glad that he had a lucky escape.
My only complaint, would be in the length-by the time the wedding was imminent, my attention was beginning to waver. The relationship issues (which was the strength of the book) were resolved, and so the conclusion was almost superfluous.
Lots of mordant quips at various prejudices and thoughts, didn’t so much have me laughing out loud, but did make me grin wryly, and think “spot on”, for “Spot of Bother” (sorry…..)

[Helen Baker]

The cold distance of Curious Incident is here replaced with a warmth and empathy that's hard to resist. I agree that Spot of Bother was slightly over-long but the lightness of touch and undercurrent of humour kept me going and I was still sorry to finish. The quiet unravelling of 'everyman' George was touchingly depicted and overall I was reminded of the excellent Going Gently by David Nobbs - which can be no bad thing!

[Meg K]

I was disappointed in this novel. After enjoying Curious Incident ... I thought this was over-long and meandering. The characterisations are very uneven, and the whole book needed editing down by about a third. It's very easy to read, but I found it unfulfilling. I'm hoping his next one will be a better read, as he is such an accomplished writer.

[Caroline Watts]

I thought that the book was disappointing and didn’t measure up to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime either Meg K. I thought that the book was extremely long and I failed to laugh. I had high expectations for this book and was excited to begin reading it, however I found that I didn’t enjoy it. Personally I felt that it wasn’t written for a general audience, it seemed to be targeted at people of similar age to George, which unfortunately I am not. I hope that his next book is written for a more general audience and is better edited to prevent it from being longwinded.

[Karen Sykes]

While I did not find A Spot of Bother a hilarious read as some readers did, I did find some parts of it amusing. I found plenty in the content to keep me reading although I would not classify it as riveting or page turning. A Curious Incident is not really an equal comparison since that was directed at the teenage market and was indeed one of the set books for one of my sons at the time.

I did find Caroline Watts comment that A Spot of Bother was aimed at people of a similar age group to George a bit disconcerting. I unlike her I enjoyed the book and like her I am not in his age group! I do disagree with her that it is not aimed at a general audience. We all have families and friends in some form or another and I would imagine most people have clashes, disagreements, frustrations etc in even the closest knit circles from time to time. How can you get more general that that?

[Steve Grice]

I’ll state at the outset that I enjoyed this book, but it is a ‘nice’ book, with both the complimentary and pejorative connotations contained within that word.

I liked the ensemble characterisation. Unlike other readers, I didn’t feel that it dwelt too much on George. For me, it was the right balance. Mark Haddon makes good use of a slightly overlapping timeline and points of view. There is genuine humour though laugh out loud may be overstating it. Some of the lines reminded me of Douglas Adams in their matter of fact absurdity, and were also reminiscent of the protagonist of Curious Incident.

This is a very open style of writing, very easy to read. To me, it’s a ‘filler’ book, something I’d read in between two more profound, challenging works in order to relieve the intensity. However, I still found it was a page turner – I really did want to see what happened next.

There was something else in the back of my mind when I was reading this though; I was very conscious throughout that the set of characters this book revolves around are thoroughly middle class. It is written from the point of view of middle-class North London Guardian-reading wine drinkers. This is why the family don’t like Ray – he’s the working class lad with a bit of money, not quite one of them. I do feel this could have been played up more in the novel to create more of a tension in the story, and this is why I think the class distinction within the novel is an unintentional result of the authors’ own background.

Why is this a problem? Well, it isn’t in itself – it only becomes a problem when that point of view seems to be the only point of view within contemporary British literature. Sure, there’s a small side line in gritty, urban underclass novels in the style of Trainspotting, but this is in the minority. Pick up most books, and they will describe a sensibility that is North London middle class.

Someone shoot me down…..

[Lynsay Lambert]

I seem to have reacted to this book fairly differently from a lot of people on here.. I did find it funny at parts, but i found at the end that i was reading a totally different book to how i thought it was going to be in the beginning!

I did really enjoy it, and there are some comedy moments, but i found it a lot more serious and sad than most seem to. I did a bit of research of Mark Hatton and found out that he used to work with people with mental health issues, so i'm assuming that a lot of the incidents in the book are perhaps drawn from real life, which i thought was so sad. I havent had a lot of contact of people with mental issues, but when we were getting the story from George's point of view, when he felt that he was losing his mind but couldnt describe it to anyone... i found it quite disturbing, after trying to imagine myself in his shoes! It was a well written book, although it could have been slightly shorter, but i didnt feel like i was forcing myself to read it.

The characters were all well written, and I liked being able to see aspects of the story from their point of view. I thought Jean was selfish, but I could understand where she was coming from, as i thought one of the main themes of the book was lack of communication - between all of the family members, which led each of them to cut themselves off from the others and seek love elsewhere.

I'm not sure if i've just taken this book a lot more seriously than intended, but its definitely stuck in my head!!

I would also like to point out that i havent read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which is why I am not drawing comparisons.

[D Powell]

I loved The Curious Incident, but I don't think it's fair to compare the two - I knew from the outset this was a completely different kind of book. I was apprehensive because I've gone off modern family sagas in a big way (too much navel gazing!)but this book has changed my opinion somewhat, mainly due to the gentle humour and touching pathos it contains.

I agree that the male characters were portrayed much more sympathetically than the female, particularly Jamie who struggles to hold his family together(loved the scene where Tony arrives at the wedding).

All in all I did feel that it was a bit too long for the type of book it is, and I did worry that the wedding scene was going to descend into farce, but I think he managed to pull it off and I'll definitely be reading more of Mark Haddon's work in the future.

[Caroline Watts]

I agree that it is difficult to draw comparisons between A Spot of Bother and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. I felt immediately part of the story and desperate to discover how the characters change and grow in The Curious incident however this is something that I did not experience with a Spot of Bother. I merely felt that the story didn’t captivate me in the same way and this is what I felt let A Spot of Bother down.

I am sorry that you disagree with my opinion Karen Sykes of why I didn’t appreciate the book as much as others, this was a personal speculation. I stand by the fact that I felt it isn’t for a general audience as I felt excluded by the book and I am part of a general audience, several members of my family have also tried to appreciate the book and they too agree with me.

However if Mark Haddon hoped this book would provoke discussion about the views expressed, he has certainly achieved it!

[sharon rowe]

There have been so many comments on here lately that I thought I had to comment again.

I have to agree with one person that found the book different at the end to the one started. But how to describe what I mean is very difficult. I think it was at the begining handled better, then at the wedding things just seemed to get out of control!

I thought this book felt like a spot of light relief but I do wonder if this was at the expense of George.

[Lynsay Lambert]

Sharon, you sound as if you felt the same as me about it..

I thought the book was going to be fairly humourous and lighthearted, but i found it to be quite a disturbing view of someone slowly losing their mind, not being able to stop it, and being aware of it. It is a good approach to it, but I take it i'm not hte only one who felt slightly uncomfortable reading it? I think it is a good book, but i dont know if i would have preferred it if it had been pitched slightly differently??

[Karen Sykes]

I do seem to have upset Caroline by disagreeing with her and if I have I apologise. I thought the point of writing comments here was to have a debate. I did not expect to agree with everyone and I certainly did not expect everyone to agree with me. I too feel I am part of the 'general audience' but I can't expect to like everything that is written for a general audience. If I don't like something that is written for a general audience does that mean that I am not part of said general audience or do I just not like that particular work?

There have been more comments since I last looked at these pages and I did find that some of the other comments I agreed with wholeheartedly. I especially agree with Lynsay and Sharon when they say that they felt they were reading a different book at the beginning to the end and thought that was a very good way of putting it. I agreed with a lot of what Steve had to say too. Until he mentioned it I had not really considered the middle class setting of the story, I suppose the relationships aspect and then the mental illness thread of the story hit me in a bigger way and overshadowed it.

[Kathy Clark]

I have to admit that I really didn't enjoy this book at all! I took it on hols with me to read on the beach in France, and to be honest I got bored with it. It was pretty light weight and I read it in a day.

It wasn't funny; it wasn't witty, and it made me cringe on several occassions. Poor George experiencing mental health problems whilst his wife had it away with a friend was not particularly amusing, just sad. The gay son was irritating and the mouthy daughter infuriating. I wanted to lock them all in a room and throw away the key!

I finished the book feeling, well, nothing at all! I didn't care about the characters, and I am sure that the book will fade from memory pretty quickly.

Not one to recommend I am afraid!

[Caroline Watts]

Karen you can be assured that you did not upset me, and I agree that the idea is to debate, however I feel that it is important to defend you own opinions. I appreciate the fact that you also defend your opinions, I like to try to understand other people’s perspectives, and this enables me to revisit parts of the books to re-read them and to see if I can change my opinion.

Kathy Clark, I am glad that I’m not alone in how I found the book. I too found myself cringing instead of laughing, as the book is supposed to be humorous, I was left feeling excluded. I like to feel emotionally involved in the lives of the characters when I read a book and this unfortunately failed to happen for me. I may have appreciated it more had the book either been about a mental breakdown or funny, but the combination personally didn’t work for me.

[cheryl pasquier]

I've just finished reading this and I enjoyed it. I haven't read The Curious Incident ... so I came to this book with a completely open mind, not knowing what to expect from the author at all. To respond to your reactions to the book, I didn't have any desire to read paragraphs out to those around me (but that's probably because my husband was snoring away next to me most of the time !!!) but I did have a few laugh-out-loud moments and also a few cringes - I especially wish I could forget George's graphic description of his view of Jean and David getting it on !!! Too much information !!!

What I thought was interesting is that all of the characters have good and bad sides, so much so that at times it was hard to work out who were the "villains" and who were the "heroes". Ray turned out to be a great bloke but he still needs anger-management classes. I felt really good for Jamie getting back together with Tony but still thought he behaved like a spoilt brat with commitmentphobia at the start of the book and didn't really deserve him.

Ray's comment that George is possibly the sanest member of the family is also very relevant, because every single one of the characters "throws a wobbly" at some point. Katie gets pre-wedding jitters, Jean's affair is presumably a late midlife crisis, Tony avoids conflict by running away to Crete. I was left wondering if George really did have mental problems or if he was perfectly sane all the time, just suffering the stress and shock of seeing his wife in bed with his ex-workmate and then as a result of the champagne and medication. After all, who knows ? It was certainly a bit drastic but maybe cutting off his "lesion" really did cure him of cancer !!

[Adele Winston]

In this fascinating, original, middlebrow novel Mark Haddon has created a comfortably-off family; parents George and Jean; their grown-up children, Katie and Jamie. Katie is about to remarry. Her fiancé, Ray, is a solid, loving, reliable man, devoted to both Katie and her little boy, Jacob. Quite why Ray is determined to marry Katie is never clear; she shouts at him rather often. And if, like many of us, you think your own family might be dysfunctional, this is a very reassuring novel. The family Haddon depicts consists of four people who have no way of relating to any of the other three.
Funny events take place in “A Spot of Bother”, but it is far from being a funny novel. George has recently retired, and spends his time in the garden, building a studio. He and Jean last made love months before. Jean’s daughter Katie has noticed that her mother has bought new clothes; Jean is having an affair with David, an ex-colleague of her husband’s. Jamie, Katie’s brother, has refused his lover Tony’s request to be invited to Katie’s wedding, and Tony has left him. George, home unexpectedly and unnoticed, sees Jean and David making love. The spot of bother is a spot of eczema on George’s leg; he imagines it to be cancer. Gradually, his mind unravels and he loses his reason.
As families will, they try to do their best. They pull together, they come through, and they each deserve their - however improbable - happy ending.

[richard]

Steve Grice (Aug 13th - see above).

What a load of tosh!

I think you should read the book again, this time with the appreciation that Haddon purposefully depicts the family as the "strange ones" and Ray as a pretty much normal bloke.

When the family think of Ray as working class and "not good enough for their daughter", it is not meant to make any sense - because there is no evidence of this in the book.

To say that the class distinction in this book is unintentional suggests you have missed a massive part of what this book is about; why unintentionally write such a horrible depiction of your own background?

[Steve Grice]

Richard: Thanks. No really, I'm not being sarcastic.

In the light of your comments I reread and maybe I haven't given Mark Haddon enough recogition. He is a good writer and what he has put in must have been intentional.

I still think there's a deeply middle class sensibility at the heart of the media that spreads into a lot of literature. Maybe I should stop reading the Observer...

[sharon]

i read the book and thought i had read it before. there were several bits where i was feeling deja vue but dont know where from eg george and his drawing. i had to keep telling people what i thought would happen just to see if it did. as it happened it didnt so i believe i may have read only the first few chapters or a very similar book

[Elaine Dingsdale]

Noticed-and then missed-a tv adaptation recently on one of Haddon's works. Think it would have been interesting to see, as so much more would likely to be portrayed through a visual medium.
I think perhaps part of the strength of this novel, is rooted in it's very ordinariness-the protagonists were literally the people next door(in a specific environment), and I felt that while this gave it a certain predictability, the interplay of the characters did give it an added interest. Effectively he focused on the problems of one small middleclass family, with little in terms of description of the "outside world".Think this conveyed the oppressiveness of their lives very well.
As I said in previous posts,the humour was well balanced,and necessary-otherwise the novel would have been much more serious in content and presentation. I felt very sympathetic and uncomfortable with George's illness, and part of me would have quite liked the novel to have been written solely from that angle-but much shorter!
I notice that many of us have compared it unfavourably with "dog". I haven't read his earlier work, but am tempted to do so now. I do feel that he's a talented author whose simplicity of style hides some rather profound comments about life in general.

[Sarah]

I found the ending to be quite abrupt, and am wondering if I am missing pages? Does it really end with George going to get a corkscrew?

Other than that, I enjoyed the book though had a hard time getting in line with the writing patterns in the beginning. Every time I picked it up again it was because I wanted to know what was happening next in the story, and when George was going to bust Jean for her infidelity. The end of the book did jump around a lot – something that wasn't apparent early on. All and all, a decent read.

[Doug]

I just read the book and overall, it wasn't a bad read. There is one thing that I cannot stop thinking about: I am not so sure that the ending is happy. Maybe I'm reading too much into it or I have a dark side but give George a few extra minutes with his corkscrew and I think he was going "to stop all this nonnsense" quite literally either to himself, his wife or both of them...