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Title details for A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon - Available

A Spot of Bother

A Novel

by Mark Haddon
Simon Vance
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can’t be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie’s deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip.
At 57, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden and enjoying the freedom to be alone when he wants. But then he runs into a spot of bother. That red circular rash on his hip: George convinces himself it’s skin cancer. And the deeply inappropriate Ray? Katie announces he will become her second husband. The planning for these frowned-upon nuptials proves a great inconvenience to George’s wife, Jean, who is carrying on a late-life affair with her husband’s ex-colleague. The Halls do not approve of Ray, for vague reasons summed up by their son Jamie’s observation that Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Jamie himself has his own problems — his tidy and pleasant life comes apart when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to Katie’s wedding. And Katie, a woman whose ferocious temper once led to the maiming of a carjacker, can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob.
Unnoticed in the uproar, George quietly begins to go mad. The way these damaged people fall apart — and come together — as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s hilarious and disturbing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.
A Spot of Bother is Mark Haddon’s unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Once again, Haddon proves a master of a story at once hilarious, poignant, dark, and profoundly human. Here the madness — literally — of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    September 5, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780739346464
      • File size: 337286 KB
      • Duration: 11:42:40

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Be prepared to laugh and groan out loud as you listen to the machinations of retired Englishman George Hall and his family. In his previous novel, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, Haddon managed to make autism fascinating, funny, and heartwarming. Now he takes on today's family and produces a comic tale of love, need, and misunderstanding. Simon Vance inhabits everyone with class--as well as character-revealing accents and terrific, clear pacing. He gives us ponderously serious George; gay son, Jamie, and his leather-jacketed lover--yes, Vance lets us hear the leather; confused daughter, Katie, and her--horrors!--working-class fiancé. This is an audiobook to savor. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 4, 2006
      If the reader were to give a voice to Haddon's protagonist, it would sound just like Keating's. George is an introverted, mild-mannered 61-year-old newly retired Brit who wants to ignore the emotional undertow of his conventional, middle-class family. Without trying to act out the characters, Keating clearly delineates each: George's wife (who is having an affair), his daughter (who is about to embark on another disastrous marriage), her fiance (whose cockney accent highlights class antagonisms) and his son (who fears bringing his male lover to the wedding). To avoid the family fracas, George focuses on his eczema-the "spot of bother" of the title-convinced that it is cancer and that he will die soon. Keating tries to establish a lighthearted tone, but Haddon's descriptions of the characters' misery, especially George's rapid descent into madness, are too graphic to be comical. Tone aside, Haddon writes well and Keating reads well, so many listeners will enjoy this contemporary British family portrait in which everyone will live relatively happily ever after-if only they can learn to communicate with one another. Simultaneous release with the Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, July 17).

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Just when George Hall begins to enjoy retirement, his divorced daughter, Katie, announces her plans to wed a fellow whom he and his wife think is beneath her. Charles Keating playfully tackles this complicated story and delivers line after line with sarcasm, humor, and compassion. As the wedding plans progress, Keating conveys the emotional impact of George's wife's mid-life affair with his former business partner, his son's homosexual relationship, his daughter's inability to make up her mind about tying the knot, and his certainty that he's suffering with cancer--all while sustaining the comical quality of the story. B.J.P. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 17, 2006
      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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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