Featured Reading Guide
Mark Haddon
George Hall doesn’t 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 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 tempestuous 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…
“Have your say”
Latest Comment
I am finishing your book right now and have enjoyed it very much so far. It’s frankness of the reality of this families issues is refreshing to the “Hollywood” ending so many books have. The only character that I have had trouble sympathizing with is Jean. She really is an atrocious mother and wife. If I hadn’t spent time in GB I would think her totally callous. Tha
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
FacebookAbout Mark Haddon
Mark Haddon is an author, illustrator and screen-writer who has written several books for children and won numerous prizes, including two BAFTAs. He lives in Oxford. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the South Bank Show Book Award, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
topAbout the Book
George Hall doesn’t 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 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 tempestuous 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 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 former 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 Mark Haddon’s disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.
topMark Haddon interview/review
- So this book is a bit of a changeup-relatively conventional.
Where else could I go? Curious Incident was a very odd book.
All those devices-the disabled narrator, the charts and maps … Yes, it was kind of tricksy, but it was tricksy in a way that covered its tracks quite well, didn’t it? If I got stranger still, I’d probably be off the map. But there’s a quieter oddness about this book which isn’t obvious.
- Such as?
Well, George is profoundly normal, but he’s going through a mental illness you tend not to see in books. You see a lot of depression and florid mental illness, but not that grinding, horrible anxiety that a lot of people suffer from.
- It’s also very realistic-is it closer to your own experience?
Every other person who talked to me assumed that The Curious Incident was based on someone I knew or it was the result of huge amounts of research. So I’m really loath to allow people to do the same thing with this book. But show me the artist anywhere who’s had an utterly stable mental life and I’ll buy you hot dinners for the rest of your life.
- You could probably afford it-your first novel sold millions of copies. But A Spot of Bother has had mixed reviews. Does that bother you?
Only if something someone says chimes with a secret worry I’ve already had myself, and that hasn’t happened yet. Some people will be annoyed that it’s not Curious Incident II. But that’s what I set out to do anyway.
- So you don’t really feel that fabled anxiety over the sophomore slump?
I feel it mostly as an absence of that grinding ambition which used to be there all the time-a feeling of not having written a book that was really going to work. For which reason I didn’t do a two-book deal-I wanted the freedom to finish a novel and, if it was rubbish, chuck it in the bin.
“A spot of bother,” the phrase, brings to mind Wodehouse and other comic novelists. I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can’t really be serious. Whereas I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it’s a reaction to genuine horror.
- So what tradition are you writing in?
I think of the films of Mike Leigh, which are also very realistic, very believable, but also slightly pushed to extremes, and very funny and very sad and quite painful at the same time. It seems a very British phrase. It’s a phrase you only use when there’s a meteorite coming toward you and you’re trying to concentrate on your cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches instead.
Taken from the New York Magazine
topStarting Points for Discussion
- What do you think is the spot of bother of the title? Does every character have a spot of bother, or is it just George?
- Do you think Katie does love Ray? Was she right to marry him?
- Why do you think Jean has an affair? Did this affect your feelings towards her character, and George’s?
- Mark Haddon writes about some very serious subjects – mental illness, adultery, prejudice – but often in a humorous way. Would you describe A Spot of Bother as a comedy?
- Why do you think Jamie tells Ray that he loves Tony before he tells Tony himself?
- A Spot of Bother includes several pairings of siblings: Jamie and Katie; Becky and Tony; Ray and Martin; Jean and Eileen. Which are the closest? Are any of their relationships similar to your relationship with your siblings?
- Many of the characters are driven by concerns about loving or being loved by the right people: do you think the characters resolve these issues? Does everyone end up with the right person at the end of the novel?
- Do you think it’s fair to say that A Spot of Bother is a very British novel?
- Each character has their own issue to deal with: George’s illness; Jean’s affair; Katie’s wedding; Jamie’s feelings towards Tony. Who did you feel the most sympathetic towards? Are their problems self-inflicted?
- What was your favourite moment in the book?
Other Books by Mark Haddon
A Spot of Bother
George Hall doesn’t understand the modern obsession with talking about ever…
Agent Z and the Killer Ba…
Ben s repulsive cousin, T.J., comes to stay. He discovers an incriminating …
Agent Z And The Penguin From…
Pools winner and total wazzock, Dennis Sidebottom has moved next door to Ben…
Agent Z Goes Wild
Ben’s in danger of spending his holidays cooped up in a caravan with his mad…
Suggested Further Reading
- Case Histories ~ Kate Atkinson (2004)
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian ~ Marina Lewycka (2005)
- Stranger than Fulham ~ Matthew Baylis (1999)
I am finishing your book right now and have enjoyed it very much so far. It’s frankness of the reality of this families issues is refreshing to the “Hollywood” ending so many books have. The only character that I have had trouble sympathizing with is Jean. She really is an atrocious mother and wife. If I hadn’t spent time in GB I would think her totally callous. Tha
Posted by Sarah on 2010-05-15