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What are readers saying about A Spot of Bother?
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-12-02 05:18:21.
(Language: English)
  
I really loved 'The Curious Incident...' and picked up this book for that reason, even though the jacket description bored me to death. How many books can be written about a family's comical/tragic exploits centering around someone's wedding day?I wasn't expecting this book to move me, and it didn't. However, it was well-written, had some unique viewpoints, and managed to keep me interested in all the characters at once, something that I've found is almost impossible. There were four people the story took turns centering on, but Haddon kept his calm, unobtrusive third-person narrative intact for all of them while still somehow managing to differentiate them from one another. Throughout the story I kept seeing it as one of those comic/tragic/often slapstick wedding movies that we've seen so much of lately, and I think the story would make a better one than the ones we've seen... not that I am trying to encourage more of these movies to exist. 
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Sheryl posted a review at 2009-06-28 07:53:10.
(Language: English)
This novel is heartbreaking and warm. Like he did with autism in "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," Haddon this time takes us into the world of mental illness. His descriptions are so very visceral and real, that at times I had to put the book down. The story revolves around a very proper English family that is unraveling in the midst of selfishness -- all except the poor dad, who (very unselfishly) tries to go mad privately. His madness, however, manages to bring the family back to their senses. It was a terrific read!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-12-16 01:43:13.
(Language: English)
One word to sum this book up would be 'evocative'. Reading through this book, I found myself at difference times, chuckling, bursting into laughing or descending into some variant of despondency. Mark Haddon's prose is innovative, concise and powerful. The tale of a bizarrely disfunctional family and their capers is hilarious and yet curiously moving. This cast of characters is every bit as memorable as they are unique, painted vividly with Haddon's masterful strokes. As you finish this novel, you can't help feeling you will reach for it another day, if only to savour this delectable adventure of a novel.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-06-16 06:08:01.
(Language: English)
I bought this book at WH Smiths just before I got on a train back to London from Portsmouth, and I started reading it on the journey at 5pm. I couldn't do anything else until I had finished the book at 10.30pm. My initial reaction to the storyline was to think about the movie 'Father of the Bride'. On the most basic level, it is about family and how families cope with the changes within the unit, with each member. The amazing thing is that Mark Haddon actually manages to take this very simple but important topic and lace it with humour and emotion. He perfected the technique of getting his readers to cry and laugh at the same time. A brilliant book for the summer. I think I'll be reading it again soon!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-08-01 05:18:06.
(Language: English)
Awesome! I challenge anyone not to identify with George, Jean, Jamie and Katie, the dysfunctional tragicomic family at the heart of Haddon's second novel since "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime". The story is told in a series of third-person narratives rotating around the four members of a mddle-class English family hurtling towards a wedding laced with pregnant disaster. This shifting perspective allows Haddon to delve deep into the psyches and neuroses of his characters as they strule to come to terms with their identity as a family and their relationships to one another. Filled with laugh-out-loud moments and poignant scenes guaranteed to jerk a tear, this is more than your average mish-mash of chickblokelit. Haddon utlises his literary talent to the utmost to reveal a true modern novel worthy of the accoldaes it has received.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-03-01 02:42:15.
(Language: English)
Each member in a family of four wade through problems in their love life and discover that love is not the romantic ideal, but a sense of belonging and safety. Mark Haddon's style is indeed makes for a pleasant read. However, the characters seem as though they have been pulled directly from a book about the different stages of life. The addition of a homosexual character seemed a bit contrived, as if the author were trying to prove that he is 'hip'. The ending is a happy ending. Perhaps I'm a bit pessimistic, but the ending is too tidy for the mess that leads to it, making the ending feel hollow and without substance. Haddon's first work left me more satisfied.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-07-02 08:11:38.
(Language: English)
George is trying to go insane politely. He doesn’t want his family to worry about him so he tries to deal with the fact that he may have cancer by himself (or is the cancer in his imagination?). His family – all a bit emotionally damaged themselves – have their own problems to deal with. His wife, Jean, is having an affair. His daughter, Katie, is marrying a man the whole family deems unsuitable and George’s gay son, Jamie, struggles with whether he should invite his lover to Katie’s wedding. But in the meantime George is losing the plot – and when he eventually topples over the edge all the family comes apart spectacularly. Only then does the family come together in a semblance of normality. This book is like the book version of the film Little Miss Sunshine. It's hilarious but sad; funny but scary. I cringed, laughed, cried and felt glad all in one go. Keep tissues handy.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-09-13 11:17:04.
(Language: English)
I can't make up my mind if this book is the biggest pile of poop [ other than anything by Mike Gayle of course, he really is a tosser ] or if it's quite a good page turner. During the first half I wanted to get rid of this book like one wants to get rid of cancer, but toward the end I started to quite enjoy it. A definite bonus with this book is the short chapters. You could easily leave this beside the toilet and read a chapter whilst performing your morning ablutions. I'd lay money that the publishers said "now looky here Mark, it's been a while since you knocked out Curious Incident of Dogs and all that, we need something else pronto", and this is something that Mr Haddon knocked out on a wet Wednesday afternoon.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-03-24 10:54:37.
(Language: English)
I'm usually not captivated by this kind of book, but I did find myself intrigued and I enjoyed the writing style. By "this kind of book," I mean a fairly woe-is-me depressing family drama that has a brief timeline (the books spans about a month). There were a few moments of levity, but it was mostly a sad account of a family of people I felt zero sympathy for (and they felt zero sympathy for each other). It was worth reading for the writing, but not the story.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-11-14 08:04:39.
(Language: English)
Haddon's narrative remains as fresh and engaging as ever. His story flows from one Narrator to the next in perfect form, never missing a beat or straying from one story for too long, never paying more attention to one story over the other no matter the place of the character in the story. In this story of family strife and disintigration it would have been easy to create a lopsided narrative, playing to one character over the other and creating a protagonist and an antagonist. Haddon deftly maneuvers around this, weaving a tapestry that is perfectly even, strengthened by the character threads on all sides and drawing the reader into caring for each and every one of them, often because of and not in spite of their foibles and shortcommings. In the words of our now lame duck president, it is "unputdownable".
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-03 02:45:51.
(Language: English)
"If only you could lift a lid on the top of your head and say, 'Look.' " Families are dysfunctional. Most of the time things manage to hang together, but push them slightly and they start unraveling like wool from an old jumper. Mark Haddon, in his sequel to The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-Time, pulls at that thread by introducing a forthcoming marriage and a lesion on the hip of George Hall. "He was dying of cancer. It was a horrible thought. But if he could just store it over there, in the 'Thoughts about Dying of Cancer' box, he might be OK." It took me a while to get into the book, as Mark tells the story from the point of view of four of the family members, each taking their turns in their own stream of chapters; a little like Talking it Over by Julian Barnes. Once I settled in though I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is also very funny: "They could trace calls. At least they could in films. But in films you could make someone pass out by squeezing their shoulder." "A couple of hours? Sarah wasn't very clued up about children and time measurement. Jacob was pretty much incapable of distinguishing between last week and the extinction of the dinosaurs." George starts to go mad as Mark pulls at the lesion thread and as you read you do wonder how far Mark will go with it. George's greatest scenes happen in bathrooms and it is here that Mark reaches the brilliance of his first book. Because to be honest, good as this book is, it is not as good as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. However ... wait before you stone me ... it does sit as a good companion to his first book. Dog gave insight into the disintegrating world of a child with autism. Spot gives you insight into the unraveling world of, well you or me, or the people living next door. You have been warned. Are you getting older? Do you use bathrooms? If you answer yes to these, and I'm interested if you don't, then you could end up being like George. It's no good holding on. If you have got to go. You are in the bathroom now aren't you? Okay carry on reading but be careful ... So in Dog we see Christopher hiding from the world: "So I climbed onto the middle shelf and I pulled one of the cases across like a door so that I was shut in, and it was dark and there was no one in there with me and I couldn't hear people talking so I felt much calmer and it was nice." And in Spot we see George hiding from his family: "He lay down and rolled into the shallow drainage ditch where the grass dipped before going under the fence. His coat was green. If he lay still they might not find him." Can't wait to see what Mark comes up with next. Whose head is he going to flip open next?
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-07-22 01:21:54.
(Language: English)
The funniest book Kingsley Amis never wrote. A definite throwback to the quiet, tidy, brutally funny and black novels of Amis and Evelyn Waugh. Haddon depicts a month in the life of the Hall family as they prepare for the second wedding of their daughter. As pressures mount, the paterfamilias, George, has "a spot of bother" - he is having a nervous breakdown. Haddon does an excellent job writing from the point of view of a man with precise habits and an orderly sense of the world, who starts to lose his marbles. There are some devastating funny and black scenes along the way, and though things end up happier and tidier than I expected, this was a terrifically funny book.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-07-06 05:45:41.
(Language: English)
Mark Haddon really won me over with "The Curious Incident..." despite gimmick-y narration; "A Spot of Bother", sans gimmicks...well, to sum it up, it's not much more than British Farce with little substance to make it a compelling read. Occasionally amusing banter amongst the protagonists kept me plowing through to the end, but it was a really tough (read: boring) novel to get through. It didn't help that the core storyline was quite similar to my second favorite book of all time (Jonathan Frantzen's "The Corrections") although it just couldn't hold a dim candle to it. Not one of the four protagonists/family members (a father going insane from imagining himself having cancer, his wife who is cheating on him, their son (a gay man) grappling with love issues, and their daughter who is marrying a man of questionable character) have any redeeming qualities worth reading about and are certainly not funny enough to frame in a comedic context. My biggest quibble with Haddon's style (at least with this book) is his rather annoying habit of barely introducing characters close to the protagonists that really don't lend anything to the story, or assist in fleshing out the protagonists, and only serve to muddle the narrative flow. While this was, for me, a very disappointing effort, I haven't completely given up on Mr. Haddon...I do still look forward to seeing if he recapture the magic of his first novel.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-08-29 10:40:21.
(Language: English)
despite comments from a few folks i knew who read this book about how boring it is, yadda yadda yadda, i actually found myself enjoying this story throughout. tragic in a funny way, the story unfolds from the perspective of four different people in a single family, one of them going quietly insane, yet who might ultimately be the sanest of all. the characters (main or supporting) are endearing and real with all their own problems and its not impossible to envision a family with all this happening at one go. after all, as they say, when it rains it pours.this is haddon's second book that mentions malaysia in some way (kuala lumpur for this one, visit malaysia posters in "a curious incident"), makes me wonder if he's a regular visitor :)anyway, i gotta say, i definitely liked this book.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-07-17 11:15:27.
(Language: English)
I actually laughed out loud a few times during this read. At the same time, this the emotional depth of the book really grabs you.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-29 05:02:54.
(Language: English)
If you take Eastenders and add inner monologue then you get "A Spot of Bother". This would be a good thing except I don't like Eastenders. Although there is a hopeful silver lining to the story you can't help but by slightly depressed reading it. It covers all ground from the young to the elderly and the problems for each generation. The story paints a realistic (whose family doesn't have their share of problems and arguments) portrait of family life although the sex scenes (however brief in description) between the eldery and gay characters is perhaps an area of realism we would not care to read about. Some scenes in this book border on nausea inducing. As a whole I think that you will take something away from this book whether it's the urge to call your family or just the resolution to hold on to your sanity.
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Chihoe posted a review at 2008-05-03 09:09:09.
(Language: English)
I like stories on dysfunctional families. Every family is dysfunctional in one small way or another. Mark Haddon takes this a little further without being exaggerated. Giving personal accounts from the viewpoint of the four members of the family - George, Jean, Katie and Jamie - Haddon paints a disturbing yet powerful picture on a man's slow descend to madness. I panned the book from the beginning (as what could possibly top "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time"?), especially finding it hard to get into the first few chapters. But look beyond it, and what a read! Using George's discovery of a lesion on his hip and Katie's announcement of her marriage as the setting, little secrets and issues each characters faces unravels. Haddon reveals each piece of information bit by bit, keeping the suspense to find out more on the plot, which is surprisingly hilarious, witty, thought-provoking, and perturbing.. First, an autistic child, then a demented elder, what's next?
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-07-03 04:19:41.
(Language: English)
even though this book was good, its nothing compared to his first novel "the curious incident of the dog at night-time". This said, it was funny and was displaying realistic characters and situations in a family. I thought it was a bit long... nearly 70-80 pages before something happened after the first pages events when he discovers his spot. but once near the 100 pages, I was really enjoying the book. It also shows how much the line between sanity and insanity is really thin and it doesnt take us much to push us over it. If you have a crazy family like the rest of the world, you'll probably enjoy this book. (64)
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-08-29 02:04:52.
(Language: English)
Mark Haddon is my favorite current author. Like, A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (which if you haven't read yet, I highly recommend you read that too), the story told here is full of rich characters facing life's ups and downs.I think every reader will be able to relate to a member or several members of the Hall family and the predicaments they are dealing with.I found the story and many of the characters to be almost too much like people in my own life. This story really hit home for me and reading it helped me feel like my life wasn't so strange.I don't want to give away any details or plot points b/c that would ruin the reading experience, but I'll leave you with this: this book like life is filled w/ happy, sad, bizarre, funny, and touching moments.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-07-19 09:39:48.
(Language: English)
By turns hilarious and stomach churning. Laugh out loud funny, and wincingly disturbing. I love the dry, ascerbic wit and Britishisms. What I most appreciate is Haddon's ability to capture moments of very real life, and shine a light on it - the sort of moments most of us choose to forget (such as vomiting, panic attacks, embarrassing, scary skin rashes, etc). But through all the disturbing stuff, what I love is the humanity of the characters, their vulnerability, their hopes, their courage, their efforts in the face of despair, and, despite their many flaws, each character is redeemable, even lovable. This story will stay with me for a long time.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-02-03 08:43:52.
(Language: English)
Excellent story on a more standard format than 'The Curious Incident of the Dog...'....explores the relationships in the family leading up to a wedding with great perception and humour. How little many of us understand each other. It is told with great wit and warmth....the characters grow as the novel develops. Manages to incorporate some of those old fashioned values of kindness understanding and decency whilst retaining a great sense of the absurd.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-03-27 08:51:04.
(Language: English)
It took me a while to warm up to this book, I even contemplated putting it away for how boring it was...at first. Then I felt my first pangs of sympathy for George, a well-meaning father who knows he's losing it and tries to keep it together, and even for Ray - who is trying to be with the woman he loves despite her families obvious dislike for him, and his insecurities about her feelings for him. This book told an honest tale of a family trying to get by and the struggles of each family member in the face of a mental collapse and a marriage no one wants to happen. It was well worth the read.
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A Reader posted a review at 2012-02-01 03:46:41.
(Language: English)
I loved it!
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Peter posted a review at 2010-10-03 01:59:55.
(Language: English)
I don't greatly enjoy this kind of story...sort of humourous slice of life melodrama...It is quite funny at times - especially if you like to laugh at misfortunes and misunderstandings. The plot is simple - an on-again-off-again wedding and a father losing his grip on reality - and the story is told well. The characters are fun...and this story is one that would probably convert well to the small screen. The problem with this type of book for me is that I find it hard to care about any of it; I was looking forward to it being over for most of the journey.
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maze posted a review at 2011-12-16 12:06:52.
(Language: English)
Failure, failure, failure. The irony here is, 'Fight Club' though it wasn't an easy read for me, contained a memorable content instead of this piece of junk. How on earth was this even published? The only nice thing about this book frankly is the cover and the fact that we are just little people on a 'few-storey-high' cake - there is the bigger picture. Many things didn't make any sense at all. It was way too ridiculous. Starsky and Hutch? Why would anyone even marry that moron daughter of theirs really is beyond me. What a stupid couple. I didn't feel any connection towards any of the characters whatsoever. It was all like a giant mish mash. Things just didn't add up and it was draggy as hell. Sounds to me like the author himself was confused about this story. Come on, biting to the point that it sounded like celery sticks? Then the polar bear expression? What a rude daughter who deserved a cock stuffed into her mouth to the point where worms would make their way into her insides. Tapping the forehead and asking 'how is it up there?' to her father. Come again, why is someone who supposedly is way smarter than that not brainy as her ginnie formed like husband of hers is needy as hell for security? What's with the father apologizing on and on? How does it even justify having a stupid moronic son trying to make his father's actions as downright senile? God, this George fella should have just taken the chisel and sliced his head off honestly. It just seems like everyone viewed him as the cuckoo bird when excuse me? What about the old lady with the sagging buttocks aka your mother who willingly fucked that man? I hated this book so much and it took me so long trying to get into it. Even when I thought I sort of 'did', it swerved back to being in a state of reading for the sake of finishing the damn book up. If this was a book I borrowed from the library, I would have chucked it away instantly! But because I bought this shitty book, I had to force myself to read it till the end. There will never be any revisiting back. If I do, its mainly just to list down unknown words or expressions for my own perusal in the future. Oh, a mention of Kuala Lumpur in it apparently heh. Big deal. Forget about this book, I wished I hadn't been a fool in buying his other 'upside down doggy book'. Why did this man decide to be a writer again? Not to say he can't write but he fails wholeheartedly to even present a story in this book. When I read the first four pages, I thought it would be interesting. Which bozzos found this to be comical really? Not once did I smile, nor did I laugh. What was with the idiotic merry-go-round eczema oh sorry, 'cancer' attack all about? I was expecting a showdown, a confrontation, plates flying, a divorce like what happens in real life, but oh no, he painted this man as a forgiving dementia cuckoo head. I thought at first I could connect to his character but no, this is the dumbest book ever. Just take the bloody cake slicer and plomp their stupid figurines on the cake over with chunks of cake. Drown them all. Death by cake. Oh, let the dog maul them to death first and free itself.
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