A Spot of Bother
George Hall, newly retired and suddenly convinced he is dying of cancer, watches his family assemble for his daughter's wedding with the detached horror of a man reading bad news about himself. Haddon writes domestic comedy with a sharp edge: everyone is embarrassed, no one is listening, and the dog is dying in the corner.Doubleday's edition packages the novel as middle-class farce, but the book is quieter and more sympathetic than that suggests. George's panic is real, even when it is ridiculous, and the wedding itself becomes a stage on which four people try to say what they mean without actually saying it. For readers who prefer their family catastrophes small, recognizable, and largely survivable, and who believe that the most important conversations are the ones nobody manages to finish.
