Mark Haddon - A Spot Of Bother

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A Spot Of Bother: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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As he demonstrated in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a canine murder mystery from the point of view of an autistic boy, former children's book author and illustrator Mark Haddon has a gift for reaching inside the inner world of characters whose minds should prove difficult to penetrate.
A Spot of Bother is Haddon's second novel aimed at adults, and again he writes his characters with great affection despite the fact that they're deeply flawed. Or, in the case of Bother's protagonist, George Hall, deeply insane.
The Halls are a family of people preoccupied with their own problems, largely centred around preparations for a backyard wedding. His daughter, Katie, is marrying a man no one, including Katie, thinks is good enough for her. Wife Jean is having an affair with one of George's former colleagues and struggling to plan the on-again, off-again wedding of her stubborn daughter. Son Jamie's reluctance to invite his boyfriend to Katie's wedding destroys that seemingly stable relationship.
Poor George finds his family falling apart and lacks the emotional tools to deal with the chaos head on. "Talking was, in George's opinion, overrated… The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely."
Newly retired George's own issues are an extreme example of the fretting the rest of his family – in fact, the rest of the world – exhibits. When he discovers a lesion on his hip, he leaps to the conclusion of cancer, and contemplates suicide. He gets caught up in the details of the how, discarding each method, including getting blind drunk and crashing the car – because what if he encountered another car?
"What if he killed them, paralyzed himself, and died of cancer in a wheelchair in prison?" George wonders.
The whimsical humour of the escalating hyperbole reveals a man who ponders the worst case scenario to an amusingly absurd degree. As the novel progresses, however, it becomes clear that this is no momentary flight of imagination or coping mechanism. George's insanity often escalates his worries beyond the point of reason.
The novel follows George's almost-logical reasoning. The spot could be more than eczema. The doctor didn't express himself with perfect certainty. He'd misdiagnosed Katie once. But George takes it several steps beyond reason.
Haddon doesn't inflict George with the cute insanity some fiction falls into, but the true-to-life confusion of being and dealing with someone who can seem no more odd than the average person on occasion, then lapses into genuine, over-the-top insanity.
A Spot of Bother is an often sweet, often heartbreaking story of a family falling apart and coming together. It's a deceptively funny, easy read with genuine poignancy. These compelling characters fumble their way through mental illness in the family the same way they fumble through their romantic relationships – sincerely, humorously, and ineptly.

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Ray looked at Jamie, and clearly thought Jamie was trying to arrange some man-on-man touching if his frown was anything to go by. Then it clicked, and he smiled, a proper smile this time, and said, “Let’s give it ago.”

Ray put the coin theatrically between his thumb and forefinger.

“I have to do the sprinkle,” said Jacob, clearly terrified that someone else might do the sprinkle first.

“Go on, then,” said Ray.

Jacob sprinkled invisible magic dust over the coin.

Ray did a little flourish with his free hand, lowered it over the coin like a handkerchief, squeezed it into a fist and whipped it away. The coin had vanished.

“The hand,” said Jacob. “Show me the magic hand.”

Ray opened his fist slowly.

No coin.

Jacob’s eyes were wide with wonder.

“And now,” said Jamie, holding up his fist, “bzzang!”

He was just about to open his hand and reveal the coin when Ray said, “Katie…?” and the look on his face was not good. And Jamie turned round and saw Katie marching toward him, and the look on her face was not good, either.

He said, “Katie. Hi,” and she punched him in the side of the head so that he was knocked off his seat onto the floor and found himself looking, in close-up, at Jacob’s shoes.

He heard a slightly deranged person cheering approvingly from the other side of the room, and Ray saying, “Katie…What the bloody hell…?” and Jacob saying, “You hit Uncle Jamie,” in a puzzled voice, and the sound of footsteps running.

By the time he’d levered himself into a sitting position there was a security guard approaching them saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s calm it down a bit here, people.”

Katie said to Jamie, “What the fuck did you tell Mum?”

Jamie said, to the security guard, “It’s OK, she’s my sister.”

Ray said to Jacob, “I think you and I are going to go and see Granny and Grandpa.”

The security guard said, “Any more funny business and I’ll have the lot of you out of here,” but no one was really listening to him.

72

Five minutes laterJean heard a second set of footsteps, heavier than Katie’s. She thought, at first, that it was another doctor. She braced herself.

But when the curtains opened it was Ray, with Jacob on his shoulders.

She realized, instantly, what had happened. Katie had told Ray. About her and George having doubts. About Ray not being good enough for their daughter.

Ray put Jacob down.

Jacob said, “Hello, Grandma. I had…I got…some…some chocolate buttons. For Grandpa.”

Jean had no idea what a man like Ray might do when he was angry.

She got off her chair and said, “Ray. I’m really sorry. It’s not that we don’t like you. Far from it. We just…I’m so, so sorry.”

She wanted the ground to swallow her up, but it didn’t, so she ducked between the curtains and ran.

73

Katie watched Jamieget to his feet and three things then occurred to her in rapid succession.

Firstly, she was going to have to do some serious explaining to Jacob. Secondly, she’d lost her final shred of moral superiority over Ray. Thirdly, it was the first time she’d punched someone properly since that argument over the red sandals with Zoë Canter in junior school, and it felt bloody brilliant.

She sat down next to her brother. Neither of them spoke for a few moments.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t. Not really. “I’ve been having a crap few weeks.”

“Snap,” said Jamie.

“Meaning?”

“Tony chucked me.”

“Shit. I’m sorry,” said Katie, and over Jamie’s shoulder she saw a woman who looked very like Mum running toward the main corridor of the hospital as if she was being chased by an invisible dog.

“And it wasn’t a chisel,” said Jamie, “he was ‘cutting the cancer off,’ apparently. With scissors.”

“Well, that makes a bit more sense,” said Katie.

Jamie looked a little disappointed. “I thought I’d get a better reaction than that.”

So Katie explained, about the visit home and the panic attacks and Lethal Weapon .

“Oh, I forgot,” said Jamie. “He was here.”

“Who?”

“Mum’s fancy man.”

“What do you mean, he was here?” she asked.

“He gave her a lift, apparently. He was keeping a pretty low profile. For obvious reasons. I bumped into him when I arrived.”

“So, what’s he like?”

Jamie shrugged.

“Would you shag him?” she asked.

Jamie raised his eyebrows and she realized that recent events were sending her a little bonkers.

“Sharing an aging bisexual lover with my own mother,” said Jamie. “I think life is probably difficult enough already.” He paused. “Dapper. Suntan. Roll-neck sweater. A little too much aftershave.”

She leaned forward and took hold of his hands. “Are you OK?”

He laughed. “Yeh. Surprisingly enough I am.”

She knew precisely what he meant. And at that moment it really was all right. The two of them sitting quietly together. The eye of the storm.

“So, are you getting married?” Jamie asked.

“God knows. Mum’s over the moon. Of course. So, naturally, there’s a part of me that wants to marry Ray just to piss her off.” She went silent for a moment. “It should be simple, shouldn’t it. I mean, you either love someone or you don’t. It’s not exactly quantum theory. But I haven’t got a clue, Jamie. Not a clue.”

A young Asian man in a dark blue suit walked in through the double doors and went up to the desk. He seemed sober but his shirt was covered in blood.

She remembered all those cartoons of boys sitting in hospital waiting rooms with pans on their heads, and wondered if it was actually possible to get a pan stuck on your head.

Cutting the cancer off with scissors. It was utterly logical when you thought about it. Rather strong treatment for eczema, though.

The Asian man fell over. Not in a slumpy way. But rigid. Like a rake, or the big hand of a very fast clock. He made a loud noise when he hit the floor. It was funny and not funny all at the same time.

He was stretchered away.

Then Ray and Jacob appeared.

Jacob said, “He was…There was a…Grandpa was snoring.”

Ray said, “You haven’t seen your mum, have you?”

“Why?” asked Jamie.

“She went a bit weird then legged it.”

Jacob looked at Jamie. “Magic the coin.”

“Later, OK?” He stood up and ruffled Jacob’s hair. “I’ll go and find her.”

Ten minutes later they were heading back to the village.

They took Mum in their car. Katie got into the back with Jacob. Mum was clearly not too chuffed about sitting in the front with Ray but Katie was perversely entertained by the sight of the two of them trying to sustain a polite conversation.

Besides, she liked being in the back with Jacob. The children. No responsibilities. The adults sorting everything out. Like that summer in Italy when the engine of the Alfa Romeo ruptured outside Reggio Emilia and they pulled over at the side of the road and the man with the amazing mustache came and said that it was completamente morte or something like that and Dad actually vomited into the grass, though at the time it was just another bit of strange parental behavior and a bad smell, and she and Jamie sat on the verge playing with the binoculars and the little wooden snowflake puzzle, drinking fizzy orange without a care in the world.

74

Jamie was kneelingon the stairs with a washing-up bowl of soapy water sponging his father’s blood from the carpet.

That was the problem with books and films. When the big stuff happened there was orchestral music and everyone knew where to get a tourniquet and there was never an ice-cream van going by outside. Then the big stuff happened in real life and your knees hurt and the disposable cloth wipe was disintegrating in your hands and it was obvious there was going to be some kind of permanent stain.

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