Maida Vale Library Reading Group’s November book was A spot of bother by Mark Haddon, the follow-up to his Whitbread prize-winning The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Our hero is recently retired George Hall, whose hopes for a quiet life are doomed to disappointment when his volatile daughter Katie announces her engagement to Ray, owner of “strangler’s hands” according to his son Jamie, himself struggling with the tricky question of whether to invite Tony, his most recent paramour, to the nuptials.
Meanwhile George discovers a lesion on his hip and, ignoring his doctor’s diagnosis, descends into a death-obsessed depression – meaning that he fails to notice the tell-tale signs of his wife’s affair with an ex-colleague…
We were greatly taken with the book’s black family comedy and its vivid and deeply moving depiction of George’s depression. A worthy successor to ‘The curious incident…’.
The next two group meetings are at 5.15pm on 16 December (Howard Jacobson’s Kalooki nights) and 13 January (Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society).
[Gordon]
