It's fast paced and might make a comedy series. The problem is, that amid the endless vomiting, trips to the toilet, funny comments....I think we're supposed to care about the characters...
It's the eve of Katie and Ray's wedding. She...doesnt know what she wants (is it just Ray's house, moneyt and fact he's a good father to her young son?) Ray's possibly the only likeable character- tho his determination to hold onto Katie means he starts to lose that accolade...
Meanwhile Katie's father, George, is sliding into some kind of crisis- convinced his eczema is cancer...and made much worse when he discovers his wife is having an affair with his friend...
Meanwhile Katie's brother is pining after his gay lover....
When you reach page 420 and are seriously considering ditching it rather than wade through 80 further pages...a bit of a turkey. ( )

From the author of The Incident with the Dog in the Nighttime, this quietly rollicking (so English!) novel is well worth its occasional longeurs-- like your family is. It presses its readers performatively to just be a little more patient, a little more open-eyed, a little less judgmental, a little more inventive-- and even the spot of bother that is paranoid depression with big sharp teeth, dysfunctional family dynamics given wings by class consciousness, and the daily sorrow that nibbles the soul can be transformed. Not made to go away, but transformed. Humor helps. A lot. You'll like this, I think. It revolves around a wedding. I want to be Ray. ( )

It was OK, but I did find it over-long and a bit plodding. The plot provided some good comedy, however there was a lot of forced humour in it and this spoilt the writing for me. Apart from the young boy I didn't really find any of the characters that likeable. I did read the author's first book, and had high hopes for this one, but I was left disappointed. I gave it two stars because I liked the storyline, but found the writing a bit tedious and the characters a bit too one-dimensional. ( )

Finally, having finished this book, filled with drama of a middle classed British family. Dad has anxiety attack. Mom has an affair. Brother is gay. Sister is getting married. It all blended into a tumultuous dramatic BBC kinda movie 😂

Here's my full review:
http://www.sholee.net/2018/05/mpov-spot-of-bother.html ( )

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (2006)

Loved this book. I also enjoyed Haddon's earlier novel "Curious Incident..." but think I like this even better. It is, as others have said, funny and heartbreaking. I identified with all the relationships--being a parent, a daughter, a wife, a mother. I think Haddon is so precisely on the mark about families and all the shifting dynamics. I also thought he was brilliant about self-knowledge and self-deception, but so merciful toward his characters. I really appreciated the struggle that each one faced in his or her own life. Wonderful book. ( )

Plus a half star - might have got 4 stars but I have only skimmed through bits of the book. I wasn't sure when I started it if I had read it before but a few pages and it jumped back into my memory. Enjoyed it very much. The narrative voice captures the strangeness of what is normal in much the same way as my favourite Agent Z books. The central character George has retired and his mind and actions as he begins to actually connect with the real world are observed with the same sympathetic distance as his Agent Z character - a blend of alien and innocent intelligence and a deliberate perspective of ignorance of the dodgy premises we mostly use to navigate everyday life without spending much time thinking. ( )

Reserved for my 10 cents on this book. 😀

Came to add my thoughts earlier than I expected. I liked the book. Chaotic and interesting characters that (imho) reflect an average family quite well.
Lives falling apart, people not talking, or not listening, making things much bigger than they really are, trying to keep a hold on everything that will happen... An impossible situation.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It has humour, but is not ridiculing situations. The importance of talking and really listening to the answer you get can't be emphasized enough. ( )

I understood what was going on, I just didn't like what was going on. Feel free to ignore my rating. I think I'm done reading Haddon. That first book was awful darn good, though. ( )

"A Spot Of Bother" is a humane, humorous look a man slowly unravelling in retirement and the reaction of his family to his slide into mental illness. It gets us inside the heads of an older couple and their adult children, showing, with a mix of wit, acute social observation and admirable empathy, how they try to cope with lives that are not the ones that they expected to live but are the only ones they have.

As the title suggests, this is a very polite, very English view of dealing with personal crises by trying to pretend that they're not happening, or, if they are, then convincing yourself that they can be fixed by carrying on as normal for as long as possible.

George Hall has always been a quiet, responsible man. Now he is slowly, quietly, and with as little inconvenience to others as he can manage, being overwhelmed by mental illness. He suffers from constant anxiety and panic attacks that bring him to his knees. He has convinced himself that what his doctor diagnoses as eczema is really a fatal form of cancer.

He is aware that this is probably not a rational conclusion but it's not a belief he can free himself from. Nor can he share that belief with others, especially with the way things are with his family. So he continues alone until he does something that no one can ignore. Although this sounds like a source of humour and is handled lightly at times, the thing that came through most strongly to me was how George's illness isolated him, leaving him deeply afraid, quietly desperate and totally unable to ask for help. This felt very real to me.

Jean, George's wife of many years is portrayed honestly and non-judgementally. Given her frustration at having George under her feet all the time after decades of having to live her life mostly in his absence and her affair with an ex-colleague of George's, she could have been a stock comedy figure. Instead, we see the world through her eyes understand that her life and her loves aren't that simple.

George and Jean are put under stress by their children who are going through dramas of their own and who both seem to be attracted to men who are not from either the class of the culture that their parents would have chosen.

Their divorced with one child daughter, Katie, announces her intention to marry the not-quiet-smart-enough-or-well-read-enough Ray. He's very nice of course and so good with Katie's son. He's solid, dependable chap, but is he really someone their daughter should marry?

Their gay but only recently come out of the closet son, Jamie has a relationship with a very working-class young man that the family has never met. The upcoming wedding stresses Jamie's relationship and makes him question the comfortable but perhaps overly-safe life he's built for himself.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the skilled storytelling. The chapters are short. Each one immerses the reader in the mind of a member of the family. The plot is carefully crafted to get the most humour and tension from the interlocking characters while the voices of the characters keep the story real, reflecting the ambiguities and confusions and complex emotions of people who are dealing with what life is dishing out to them.

I recommend listening to the audiobook version of "A Spot Of Bother". It's narrated with skill and precision by Alex Jennings. ( )

Although I guess I can see why certain fans don't like this one as much as Haddon's first book, I liked it just as well. It has the same flavor as the first, but with multiple main characters instead of just one. (I did not find them to be too many, as others are saying.)
Mark Haddon still does a fantastic job of showing rather than telling in terms of his characters--he really has a wonderful way of letting the reader get inside the characters' heads. I think that was part of what made his first novel great, and he has held onto that in this one.
Haddon writes well and is able to portray his characters both in angst and in happiness, which adds to the plot since one finds themselves identifying with the feelings of love, confusion, and upset. It is also an interesting perspective of how parents try to relate and understand their grown children and their decisions.

What made this one almost better than Curious Incident was the abundance of poignant moments. This book does not lack for meaningful segments but also doesn't overdo it. I sat and thought about certain passages sometimes --they really made me think.
I highly recommend this book to those who liked the first book for more than just its focus on a kid with a developmental disorder. He was very interesting, but I liked this family much more. They were more real, and quite a bit dysfunctional as any other family, only they had much more class, being English and all.

The only parts of the book I had a hard time with, were (1) that the panic attacks were difficult to deal with, if you've ever had one. (2) The "scissors" scene made me cringe, and race through -- I cannot understand anyone being that sick, they could do this to themselves. But then again, I am a big baby when it comes to pain, having had so much of it already. (3) I had a hard time with the ending, what with the (very English??) "let's get over with this, and on with things" attitude the main character seemed to suddenly BE ABLE to develope.. if you have EVER been depressed, this does not happen quite so quickly, or so easily. I don't care if you're English, and have that "stiff upper lip" mentality. That man needed LOTS more therapy, and anti-depressants. (And maybe this is why so many people are having a hard time with this book. Who among us is really all that comfortable with mental illness....??)


My favorite passage, of which there were many:


"What was Jamie going to say? It seemed so obvious what he felt. But when he tried to put it into words it sounded so clumsy and unconvincing and sentimental. If only you could lift a lid on the top of your head and say, 'Look.'" (243) ( )

George is a paranoid hypochondriac, and has a serious mid-life crisis. His wife Jean is having an unlikely affair. Their daughter Katie is going to get married.. maybe. Her parents don't like her fiancé although he's one of the least unpleasant people in the book. Katie's brother Jamie is gay, and his parents don't quite know how to handle this, although they try to be accepting....

Lots of short chapters from different viewpoints, so we never really get to know anyone. Way too many minor characters, some of them mentioned only once. Some scenes that made me squirm, either violent or intimate, and some truly bad language.

On the plus side, the pace is good, and I kept reading... the ending is mostly satisfactory, if a bit too neat and tidy. But it's not a book I would recommend. I didn't find it either amusing or poignant, and could not relate to any of the characters.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-spot-of-bother-by-mark-haddon.htm... ( )

I enjoyed this book tremendously, notwithstanding the mixed reviews for it. It helps that the chapters were short, making it easy to read. There is humour, love, and surprise. Each of the characters faced up to their fears and anxieties, and found love in the end. ( )

This went downhill from a mediocre premise. The ending was entirely unsatisfying, and if any part of the goal was to challenge the way we (and men in particular) experience and respond to mental health crises, it failed. In the future I will trust my gut and skip the sad sack family narratives. ( )

I am not going to compare this one to Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Yes, that one is a great book but it has been too long since I read it for me to retain any strong memories. With A Spot of Bother, Haddon brings readers into the heart of the Hall family and the drama they create over the Katie’s approaching second marriage. One would think that a marriage the majority of the family is not all that keen on occurring would be enough fodder for any book, but we learn that each family member has its own self-absorbing issues: wife/mother Jean is distracted by some private matters she wants desperately to keep private; son/brother Jamie is having problems with his boyfriend; Katie is starting to have some doubts about the marriage and George – quiet, respectable and dependable George – starts to psychologically unravel. There are a lot of really fun, entertaining bits as both George, other family members and the wedding planning hit some interesting, farcical lows but at its heart, this is a wonderful story of family dynamics.

A delightful, entertaining read. ( )

Incredibly annoying characters I found impossible to care about. What an irritating book! ( )

Well written, but unfocused. Lacking in memorable characters. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. In fact after I read it I found myself missing the characters. They were so real!
George Hall, a 61 year old newly retired husband gets a little goofy Especially after coming upon his wife and lover having sex in HIS bed! But he left the scene and didn't confront her. Instead he try to keep the peace at least until his daughter marries her low life boyfriend in their garden. However, feelings have a. way of escaping and he creates scene after scene. But you can't help but feel for the poor guy! ( )

An ordinary family, coping with love, loss and a nervous breakdown. Told from multiple viewpoints, the story explores the build-up to a wedding and the problems faced in the relationships within and beyond the family of four who are at its core.

The insight into the decay of George's mental health is very touching. I also found Jamie's point of view intriguing, as a gay man who is unsure about whether his parents are comfortable with his sexuality. I was least convinced by Jean and Katie, the female characters. Katie just seems to be angry all the time, while Jean seems remarkably oblivious to the problems that her husband, George, is experiencing.

There are both gay and straight sex scenes in this book - but only the former are described in any detail. This makes the novel feel lop-sided to me. ( )

Read Summer of 2014 - perfect beach read but would also be great in front of a fire on a rainy winter night ( )

Fun and funny. I like a farce where the author is compassionate. But I did feel like Jean got the raw end of the deal. I'd have dumped George for David. ( )

Throughout this sometimes redeeming, often horrible book, I kept thinking about how much every human being needs to be taught a lesson on how to treat other human beings who have mental illness. Can no one in this book just listen to the man and help him (without giving him a bottle of Valium)? Oh the frustration.

If you loved The Curious Incident of the Dog... you probably won't like this novel by the same author. Not recommended. ( )

So, turns out I have read this at some point - I don't remember it too well but I do remember not caring for the characters (and it is after all a character driven story) to want to re-read it. ( )

Quick paced with very, very short chapters written from each character's viewpoint that draw you in to their personality and problems but also keep a wry and humorous distance. It was funny, entertaining and warm but also realistic depicting what goes on in a quite reserved man's head as he has a nervous breakdown and how -- and why -- his family glosses over and doesn't realize what is going on. Less realistic in the various sudden onset, happy end conclusions though. That said I prefer happy ends to pessimism. ( )

A small British family lives through crisis after synchronous crisis in this droll, very dark comedy. Each member of the family is struggling with their own modern-day version of anguished malaise – deeply embroiled in their own variety of the existential condition. Fear of death, fear of love and the struggles in their relationships vie for attention as the chapters drift back and forth showing each character’s perspective on the conflicts. ( )