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A Spot of Bother By Mark Haddon Doubleday 354 pp. Rating:
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In A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon explored the world of an autistic boy. In his follow-up novel, A Spot of Bother, Haddon explores the world of emotionally and psychologically dysfunctional adults. Although Bother didn’t achieve the monetary success of Incident, as a piece of fiction, Bother is actually more mature.
The story revolves around George, the Hall family patriarch, and his reaction to a spot of eczema that appears on his thigh. Convinced the eczema is really cancer, the already neurotic George confronts his mortality and descends into an abyss of panic attacks and semi-psychotic behavior, culminating with the hysterical but cringe-inducing scene when he attempts to excise his “cancer” with a pair of sharp scissors.
While George copes ineffectively with his psychological demons, the rest of his family struggles with issues of commitment. His wife Jean debates whether she should leave George for her more engaging lover. His daughter Katie wonders whether she should marry Ray, who she doesn’t love but who provides a good home. And his son Jamie agonizes over his breakup with his boyfriend Tony, who wants to have a relationship.
Anyone who picks up Bother expecting a repeat of Incident will be disappointed. Gone are the cute drawings, the child’s perspective of the world, and ultimately inconsequential actions. In Bother, Haddon delivers adult themes, psychologically scarred adult perspectives, and events that can dramatically alter people’s lives. And he handles this transition to adult fiction quite well, even though his narrative isn’t completely masterful.
He devotes each chapter to one of his four main characters (George, Jean, Katie, and Jamie), and he writes from that character’s point of view so we discover their interpretations of the events unfolding around them. Haddon also gives each chapter the voice of its corresponding character (in Katie’s chapters, he refers to Jean as “Mom” and George as “Dad”). However, he doesn’t always maintain this voice as his voice often interjects.
Still, Haddon manages to get into his characters’ heads, particularly George’s. He details George’s panic attacks and his efforts to deal with them extremely well. But again, Haddon falls short in fully developing his characters because he doesn’t handle their pasts as skillfully. He prefers to tell us about how their personalities affected their behavior in the past rather than show us. He reiterates that Katie was a short-tempered, rebellious teenager, without offering many supporting episodes.
Perhaps Haddon sticks to the tell-rather-than-show approach because he limits his characters’ interactions with each other throughout the first three-fourths of the narrative. Nearly every time someone tries to connect with someone else, the person either can’t remember the phone number or ends up leaving a frantic voicemail message. Then again, maybe this family wouldn’t have been so dysfunctional if they had communicated better, which would’ve meant that book didn’t need to be written.
From a technical perspective, Haddon writes clean, short sentences and paces the plot nicely. He also treats the potentially serious subject matter with a touch of dark humor, which saves the narrative from being overly depressing. To ensure that he avoids the depressing, he gives the story a positive, if not slightly too tidy, ending.
What Bother lacks is the metaphorical qualities that infused Incident. Bother’s narrative remains that: a simple telling of dysfunctional lives with no greater meaning hidden beneath its surface. If anything, it’s more like self-help fiction. It speaks of typical human relationships—how we sabotage them through our own behavior and how we can overcome ourselves to make them work.
Even though A Spot of Bother won’t ever be considered a great work of fiction, you certainly won’t find it bothersome.
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