A Spot of Bother

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. &quot;The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.&quot; Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.<br><br>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 &quot;strangler's hands.&quot; 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. <br><br>Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. <br><br>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.<br><br>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.