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A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
The 'Blurb'
At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his unpredictable daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to 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 way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband's former work 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.
I loved this book! It made me laugh out loud, which isn't something that happens often with me and books!
The story is broken down into small chapters, each about one of the four family members. George's chapters are probably the funniest, even though it seems so wrong to be laughing at someone having a breakdown.
I'm a bit squeamish, so one of the chapters had me having to stop and compose myself before I read on, but it was so well written - in fact, it was compulsive reading and the fact that the chapters are so short (some being just â…” of a page long! means that I kept thinking 'oh, I'll just read to the end of the next chapter' and before I knew it, I'd read another 50 pages!
I noticed a few things, which made me wonder whether this book was started some time ago but then shelved. One which sticks in my mind was Jamie's irritation towards a work colleague who "took the foil off a Penguin, folded it in half, then rewrapped the bottom of the bar in the now double-thickness foil" - because Penguin biscuits don't come in foil and haven't for many years! Not that this matters in the slightest - I just wondered whether this was maybe a resurrected project after the success of his last book!
I loved The Curious Incident... - this is totally different to that but I found it equally enjoyable, if not more so!
The paperback is 503 pages long and is published by Vintage. The ISBN number is 978-0099506928.
8½/10
(Read June 2007)

Oh is this good news or not - another book to add to my TBR pile - it's getting mountainous and overwhelming. I notice it's 500 pages long so it can be a contender for a chunky challenge - that will push it up the TBR list a bit.

It sounds brilliant - look forward to reading it.

I'm definitely going to add this to my to read pile!
Funnily enough this book review has also caused a rather unexpected nice thing to happen to me today. I was talking about this book as one of the books I'd seen reviewed on here that had taken my fancy whilst I was on the phone to my Mum tonight. Turns out she has read the book too and said it was quite good! It's made me realise how little I talk about books with my Mum despite the fact she does read and it would probably be nice if we did swap book titles! So thank you for the lovely unexpected side effect of this review I'll be sure to ask her whats she is reading in future!

maclsj said:Funnily enough this book review has also caused a rather unexpected nice thing to happen to me today. I was talking about this book as one of the books I'd seen reviewed on here that had taken my fancy whilst I was on the phone to my Mum tonight. Turns out she has read the book too and said it was quite good! It's made me realise how little I talk about books with my Mum despite the fact she does read and it would probably be nice if we did swap book titles! So thank you for the lovely unexpected side effect of this review I'll be sure to ask her whats she is reading in future!

That is great maclsj what a lovely thing to happen.
I finished 'A Spot of Bother' in the early hours of this morning, and it was great, I loved the whole story, a big read but you would not know it x

I just finished this book; what a gem it was!

Loved the short chapters, and the detailed little stories about each characters lives. As I kept reading it, I was just dying for the moment when
Spoiler
George confronts Jean about her affair!

Now I'm really looking forward to reading this - chunky challenge for July.

SteffieB said:What a good review Now I know I want to read this one -- loved Curious Incident, too.
Thank you!

Me again! There were some genuine funny parts in the book, despite the subject, t
Spoiler
he part where George is found hiding under a bush by friends of the family, I had a bit of a chuckle to that.

Great reviews, I can't wait to read this. I also enjoyed Curious Incident.