Category Archives: Mark Haddon

21st century literature, A Spot of Bother, Book review, Mark Haddon

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

This was Haddon’s second novel, published in 2006 after his hugely successful “A Curious Incident”. I have reviewed his third novel, “The Red House” on this blog previously, and was optimistic that this would be equally readable. Largely it was – the very short chapters and frequent changes of narrative perspective meant the pages passed quickly, and I finished the near 500 pages in a couple of days. This would normally an indication that the novel was well written and enjoyable, but I finished this with a vague feeling that something wasn’t quite right. What could it be?

Well, to start with, there’s that awful title, a cheesy pun (the principal character has a spot which he thinks is cancerous, and which triggers a series depressive episode) reminiscent of a Norman Wisdom film or episode of Some Mothers (“Betty, I’m having a spot of bother”). The author avoids putting much effort into giving the characters a back story, which is sketched in very faintly, simply by making occasional reference to “that time the dog got run over in Rhyl” or “the time we crashed the mini in Copenhagen” (made up examples, but you get the idea). I flicked through the book at random and picked out these examples (not made up this time) and realised that Haddon uses this technique a lot more than I thought:
“several years ago when he had fallen from a stepladder, broken his elbow on the rockery, and passed out, a sensation which he remembered as being not unpleasant (a view from the Tamar bridge in Plymouth had featured prominently for some reason)” (page 1
“He had not felt like this since John Zinewski’s Fireball had capsized several years ago and he had found himself trapped underwater with his ankle knotted in a loop of rope.” (2)
“Betty’s brother, the one who died in that horrible factory accident, had made a hat out of a napkin.” (52)
“”Got pulled over by police on the M5 once…wingwalking on a Volvo roofrack”” (66)
“Coming home from university… spilling that paint over the cat, losing her passport in Malta.” (233)
And so relentlessly on. All families have disaster stories, enhanced over time, which cumulatively build the family history. They are important. But a novelist needs surely to make more of them than this. At first I thought we would get round to visiting these incidents and finding in them the key to the principal characters various neuroses – there has to be a reason why a bit of eczema causes George to have a full-blown nervous breakdown – but it never happens. I don’t mind doing a bit of work to fill in gaps left by an author, but this was too much – the characters were cut-outs who behaved as they did for no apparent reason, take it or leave it.
There is an attempt at farce here, reminiscent of Tom Sharpe. People mix anti-depressants and alcohol with inevitable results, dog poo is trodden in, a toddler’s toy is tripped over, a gay couple kiss and outrage the religious aunt and uncle, and so on. The wedding, which is the drawn-out climax of the novel ends in a fight, sex, and tears, as we always knew it would.
Being charitable, I prefer to think of this novel as a dry run for the much more controlled “Red House”.
PS: like most contemporary novels the cover and back cover are covered in quotes from reviewers. You get the sense that my luke-warm response was shared – the Guardian described the book as “readable” and “brisk”, the Telegraph “entertaining” and the Sunday Times “crisp, light” (like a white wine?). Damned with faint praise.
 
 
Standard
21st century literature, Mark Haddon, The Red House

The Red House by Mark Haddon

The premise of this novel is very simple. Brother and sister Richard and Angela have recently lost their mother after a long and distressing illness. Somewhat out of the blue Richard offers to host (can host be used as a verb like this?) Angela and family in a week long holiday in a cottage in Herefordshire, the eponymous Red House. Richard brings his second wife Louisa and her daughter, Melissa. Angela brings husband Dominic, teenage son Alex, slightly younger but still teenage daughter Daisy, and eight year old Benjamin. (I wrote the sentence above without reference to the text, a good sign that the characters came to life for me).
Over the course of the week their back stories are filled in, childhood traumas revisited, (Richard and Angela’s mother was an alcoholic, Angela had a stillborn child eighteen years earlier, and so on) and although very little of note happens in the course of the week (more than you might have thought from reading some reviews) the character development is more than sufficient to maintain interest.  One teenager slowly comes to a realisation that they are gay, another is embroiled in a cyber bullying/teen suicide scenario. There is some light shopping, cooking for eight, board games and jigsaws, a traditional rainy holiday.
The narrative style Haddon uses here sometimes makes the reader work harder than they might be used to – there’s very little “Richard said” or “Angela drowsed off and began to dream” – instead we are pitched straight into the stream of consciousness or dream itself, and left to catch up from the context and content. Occasionally one has to back track once working out what is thinking or dreaming or talking. That is clearly a deliberate attempt to keep the reader focussed and paying attention, and it works well – the text is not so obscure that the reader can’t eventually work out who is thinking, even if they have jumped associatively from what was being said a moment ago.

In “The Curious Incident” Haddon came very close to successfully presenting the world through the eyes of a  child with Asperberger’s Syndrome. I had some issues with this – I thought the way Christopher navigated his way around the London Underground a bit too contrived and unconvincing – but here the ventriloquism reaches a new level. Each character has a convincing internal monologue. Benjy’s eight year old perspective on the world was especially touching and convincing, but each character is given their own realistic voice. Haddon can show the world equally well through the narcisstic eyes of a teenage bully, lovers feeling children again through one another’s touch, or a mother still grieving for a lost child after 18 years.

There are no heroes here – everyone is flawed one way or another, some more than others, but equally no cardboard villains, just real, convincing, vulnerable people. The detail is stunning – one character puts soft brown sugar on her frosties in a way only someone with weight issues would; another character has unsuccessful 20 second sex which ends violently, but still exults at having had sex. There are also plenty of reference to popular culture and literature here to keep the reader entertained, but the novel wears its learning lightly. All in all highly recommended, and I will be tracking down his second novel when a gap emerges in my reading schedule.

Standard