At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the arguing the wedding has occasioned, which gets in the way of her late-life affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy 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. This is a deeply moving portrait of a family who fall apart - and come together.
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Succinct chapters, replete with horror, humour and the minutiae of everyday life - Daily Mail
Amusing and brisk and charming - Guardian
A delightfully dry comedy - Mail on Sunday
This is a masterful novel in which Haddon has surpassed his previous achievement. He pulls of the extraordinary trick of being simultaneously riotously funny, profoundly insightful and deeply poignant... Painted on a small canvas, Haddon has written beautifully about the messiness of life with a poise and grit that few novelists truly possess. Fans of Curious Incident can rest assured that they won't be disappointed - Scotland on Sunday
Haddon's style is a reader's bliss. He writes seamless prose. The words are melted into meaning... Haddon's gift is to make us look at ourselves when we think we're looking away, being entertained - Scotsman
Mark Haddon is an author, illustrator and screenwriter who has written fifteen books for children and won numerous prizes, including two BAFTAs. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was a bestseller around the world.It won more than seventeen literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the South Bank Show Book Award, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Mark Haddon's first collection of poems, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, was published in 2005. His next novel, The Red House will be published in May 2012. Mark Haddon lives in Oxford.