A novelist of major potential puts his artistic ambition on hold
with this minor follow-up to his audacious breakthrough.The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) would be a tough act
for any writer to follow. Haddon earned raves from critics and
readers alike for the ingenious narrative voice of his protagonist,
an autistic teenaged math genius investigating the disappearance of
his mother and the death of a dog. The British author's first shot
at adult fiction (following a number of children's books) was so
strikingly original that it's particularly disappointing to find
him here settling into the sort of conventional domestic comedy
that so many have done before and that some have done better.
George Hall is a 61-year-old retiree, a dutiful father and a dull,
dependable husband. He has been living on autopilot until he
discovers a spot on his skin and convinces himself that he has
cancer. When neither his family nor his doctor takes his
self-diagnosis seriously, he starts to think he's losing his mind.
Wife Jean has been distracted by her affair with one of George's
former coworkers. Their divorced daughter, Katie, announces her
impending marriage to a man who might even be duller than George,
but who provides security and emotional support for her son. Her
gay brother, Jamie, is mainly concerned with whether to bring his
lover to the wedding, knowing that his parents are in denial and
that the guests will be scandalized. Will George die or go crazy?
Will Jean leave him? Will Katie go through with the wedding? Will
Jamie bring his lover? Will the reader care? Though Haddon is a
clever writer with an eye and ear for the absurdities of everyday
life, the results here fall somewhere between the psychological
depth of Anne Tyler and the breeziness of Nick Hornby.Takes too
long to arrive at its farcical finale and seems too slight in the
process. (Kirkus Reviews)
'A painful funny humane novel: beautifully written, addictively
readable and so confident' The Times Discover this brilliantly
comic and moving bestselling novel by the award-winning author of
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Porpoise.
At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable
retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical
novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his
tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to
Ray. The family is not pleased, as her brother Jamie observes, Ray
has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or
loves the way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a
bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her
affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy
and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to
invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the
uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly
begins to lose his mind.
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