required reading

A Spot of Bother was never going to escape the shadow of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. However, since many readers bought this book in the hope of repeating the reading experience of Curious Incident, it seems fair to compare the two novels, and unfortunately the comparison isn't favourable.

Curious Incident is witty, warm, and engaging. A Spot of Bother has these qualities to some degree: a dash of black humour, especially in the character of George, the likeability of most of the characters, and our vague desire for everything to come right for them in the end. However, A Spot of Bother lacks the ingenious treatment of intriguing (to most people) subject matter that made The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time delightful, and it lacks spark and verve.

A Spot of Bother's subject matter is the mundane mess that is most people's personal lives. So we meet George, suffering from depression and quietly going mad; Jean, George's wife, having an affair with her husband's ex-work colleague; Katie, the fiery single mother who seems to be about to marry a man not quite good enough for her; Jamie, the homosexual estate-agent who is struggling with commitment; Ray, Katie's fiance, Northern (the rather broad brush portrait of this 'Northerner' alienated me) and faintly disapproved of by all the family. Haddon is absolutely determined to rub our faces in the characters ordinariness, so almost every one of the short chapters begins with a matter of fact sentences such as:

Jamie ate a seventh Pringle, then put the box away.

Katie got in the car and turned on the stereo.

George sat patiently in Dr Barghoutian's waiting room.

Stylistically the writing remains fairly flat and turgid and plot-wise there are no moments of real excitement or surprise. Whilst this is probably the point of the exercise (real life isn't full of epiphanic moments, after all), it does make for tedious reading at points. Haddon drives the point relentlessly; real life is full of people muddling through, their lives touching on the lives of others who are also struggling with their own problems. Though effectively expressed, I didn't feel I needed a full-length novel to remind me of the fact, mini-drama style.

In fact, Haddon often seems to be writing for a television audience. Comedy is often physical (Jamie's one night stand with a man with food poisoning, George hiding in a ditch but found by relatives, a comical fight at a wedding, Bridget Jones-style), and the dialogue is captured well. I certainly would have rather watched an amusing two-hour TV adaptation. One draw-back to this avenue of thought is that there is no sense of place within the book, apart from a dreary middle-England feel; it is almost impossible to recall or imagine where these characters live. They could be any people, anywhere.