Pam's Book 12: A Spot of Bother

I bought this book several years ago, right after reading Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. I started it and was distracted by some other shiny object and didn't pick it up again until a couple days ago. The spot of bother in the title is two-fold: it is an actual spot on George's hip, as well as the idiomatic spot of bother. George Hall, always a perfectly sane if somewhat emotionally distant man, falls apart upon discovering this spot on his hip. He decides that it's cancer and his days are numbered. It's not and they aren't. In the meanwhile, his daughter Katie is planning (and then isn't planning and then is and isn't and is) to marry a man (Ray) whom everybody thinks is beneath her. His son Jamie's boyfriend Tony breaks up with him because he (Jamie) is a commitment-phobe. Jean, George's wife, is having an affair with David, a former colleague of George's. Things for the Halls are, to put it mildly, a bit of a mess. George is slowly and inexorably going insane. Katie is unclear whether or not she should stay with Ray. Jamie wants to get back together with Tony. Jean is torn between her lover and her husband. What ensues is a hilarious yet touching commentary on the modern family.

In some ways, A Spot of Bother reminds me a lot of the Jonathan Tropper book, This Is Where I Leave You, that I read last month. The family in Tropper's book are brought together by a funeral, not a wedding, and the father in Tropper's book is dead, whereas George Hall just thinks he is going to die. The Hall family is somewhat more functional than Tropper's family, but significantly dysfunctional in their own right. Yet both books leave the reader with the feeling that there is hope for all those less-than-perfect families out there. They both have some hilarious scenes but still leave you thinking, "Yeah, that's right. I'm glad my family's not the only one out there like that." And you feel that if the Halls can work it out, so can your family. Because, let's face it, no matter how close we all are, all families are at least somewhat fucked in in our own special ways. And as long as the love is there, so is the bond.