A SPOT OF BOTHER

Book ID/图书代码： 00200006B07349

English Summary/英文概要： George Hall doesn’t understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. ‘The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.’ Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.

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. Her 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 wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life 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.

The way these damaged people fall apart – and come together – as a family is the true subject of Mark Haddon’s disturbing yet very funny portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 故事讲述了一个退休老爸乔治的一些烦恼事——他对家庭的掌控渐渐松动，它现在属于年轻人，比如凯蒂、雷、杰米、托尼……但身为曾经的一家之主，他依然得秉持一些作风，比如：不在家里制造麻烦、不让孩子们讨厌自己、不在女儿的婚礼上拖后腿…… 所以，即便身患“癌症”，他也必须隐瞒病情，独自面对。恐惧的时候就来点幻想麻痹大脑；洗澡的时候一定要关灯，这样就不会看到那些扩散到表皮的癌细胞；或者，索性用一把剪刀，自己来做一次切除手术！(DB)

Awards/获奖情况："perfect medicine – easy to swallow, a touch formulaic, but nipping the nerve and hitting the truth" ---Tom Adair, Scotsman

"simultaneously riotously funny, profoundly insightful and deeply poignant" ---Julie Wheelwright, Scotland on Sunday

"Haddon floats insights – sculpted, delicate and precise as origami – on currents of offbeat wit." ---Jennie Renton, Sunday Herald

"A painful, funny, humane, novel: beautifully written, addictively readable and so confident…" ---The Times

`A delight to read... touching and genuinely funny’---Word Magazine, 19 October, 2006

"a convincing, if blackly comic, study of suburban life"---The Good Book Guide

`warm and funny tale of family life’---www.bfkbooks.com

About the Author/作者介绍： 马克·哈登 Mark Haddon，长篇小说处女作《深夜小狗神秘事件》2003年出版，并于2004年圣诞前夜，超越红极一时的《哈利·波特》，登上英国畅销书排行榜第1名，并荣获英国“惠特布莱德年度最佳图书”、“《卫报》最佳儿童小说奖”、“大英图书奖年度最佳童书”等三十多项文学大奖。第二部长篇小说《老爸终于精神失常了！》沿袭了其一贯的写作风格，处处体现出对人生的哲理性思考和总结，并2009年被法国导演阿弗烈德·洛特改编成同名电影，广受好评。

Mark Haddon is an author, illustrator and screenwriter who has written fifteen books for children and won two BAFTAs. His bestselling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was published simultaneously by Jonathan Cape and David Fickling in 2003. It won seventeen literary prizes, including the Whitbread Award. His poetry collection, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea was published by Picador in 2005. Mark Haddon lives in Oxford.

Format:HARDCOVER

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)

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