Spot of Curiosity

Even if mark haddon8217;s earlier book had not been a bestseller and had not also dealt with an illness, it would be difficult not to make comparisons with A Spot of Bother.

Even if mark haddon8217;s earlier book had not been a bestseller and had not also dealt with an illness, it would be difficult not to make comparisons with A Spot of Bother. If A Curious Incident of A Dog In the Night-time was an unsentimentally told but powerful narrative of an autistic boy, his new offering is about George, settling down into new retirement when an outbreak of eczema, which he mistakes for cancer, triggers off his downward spiral into borderline senility.

In the first book, the plot is loose, a technique employed so as to not distract from the boy, for whom even a life devoid of external twist and turns is in itself challenging and complicated. A Spot of Bother has a much wider canvas. It is inhabited by a lot more people8212;George; his wife and her lover; George8217;s son and his boyfriend; his divorced daughter and her fiance. The plot is extended to give them context. Consequently, there8217;s a lot more going on.

The triumph of A Curious Incident8230; was the lack of self-pity and unaffected bravado of its little hero. This, again, is where Haddon scores in A Spot of Bother. To keep what he considers to be a terminal illness from his loved ones, George creates situations meant to distract, leading to the exasperation of the people around him. Haddon introduces a grandson to create a parallel between the innocent self-centredness and attention-deficiency that afflicts the very young and the increasingly old. Often, you feel that as George begins his descent from mental and emotional maturity and his grandson his ascent, they are crossing each other somewhere in between on the age ladder.

But while the book flap gives the impression that this is a book with dark undertones8212;8220;George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip and quietly begins to lose his mind8221;8212;there is humour here which is different from that in A Curious Incident8230; A child struggling against autism, even in its most funny moments born out of innocence and incomprehension, makes for a heart-rending narrative, while an account of an ageing but otherwise healthy man going through what sometimes looks like a case of hypochondria does not touch the same chord. George8217;s family too seems to be not quite be as 8220;damaged8217; as the blurb suggests but more self-indulgent and often needlessly hysterical.

Which explains why, as the book progresses, featuring the strong-willed daughter8217;s now-on-now-off-now-on-again wedding, the son8217;s preoccupation with his sexual orientation and the wife8217;s burden of guilt from an adulterous relationship, George8217;s 8220;illness8221;, which throws the family together, often becomes an occasion for comical-bordering-on-slapstick melodrama.

Once again, it is Haddon8217;s ability to juxtapose George8217;s mundane routines with the derailment going on in his mind, and the pull between George8217;s need to be a responsible father and his yearning for some privacy in which he can go insane with dignity, that makes this book a delightful read.