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The novel is a darkly comic look at a character whose life changes with the prospect of serious illness.
Doubleday
September 2006
On Sale: September 5, 2006
Featuring: Georgie Hall
368 pages
ISBN: 0385520514
EAN: 9780385520515
Hardcover
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Literature and Fiction | Fiction
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant,
perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the
emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does
not understand the modern obsession with talking about
everything. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in
ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life,
however, cannot be ignored. At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement,
building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and
listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous
daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married,
to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased –
as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.”
Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful
way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit
put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has
occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling
late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues.
And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles
when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded
nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion
on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart – and come together
– as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet
amusing 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. Here the madness – literally –
of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s
crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.
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