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Outstanding
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Library Journal Donna Bettencourt
Haddon perfectly captures his characters' frailties and strengths while injecting humor with pinpoint accuracy. [1 Sept 2006, p.136]
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Outstanding
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USA Today Donna Freydkin
But the observations are so astute, so gently funny, so touching, that you get caught up in the fate of the well-meaning, if slightly imprudent, Hall family.
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Outstanding
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The New York Times Book Review David Kamp
[Haddon's] so wondrously articulate, so rigorous in thinking through his characters' mind-sets, that A Spot of Bother serves as a fine example of why novels exist. Really, does any other art form do nuance so well, or the telling detail (“the pig-shaped notepad on the phone table”) or the internal monologue?
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Michael Dirda
Superbly entertaining.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Rebecca Pearson
This a superb novel, and I was shocked when it didn't made the Man Booker longlist.
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Outstanding
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Chicago Sun-Times Carlo Wolff
An exceptionally assured and versatile writer, Haddon artfully guides the Halls -- and the reader -- toward light at the end of a complicated domestic tunnel. His craftsmanship is dazzling, his sense of character profound, his kindness toward his creations that of a consummate caregiver. Humorous, occasionally heart-rending and always enthralling, A Spot of Bother is a wonder and a joy.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Caroline Moore
The mad mundanity with which George directs his DIY organisational skills towards solving his particular spot of bother – with a pair of kitchen scissors – is unforgettable.
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Favorable
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The Observer Adam Phillips
Haddon is trying to rescue something important about literalness in a genre, the modern novel, that has always been suspicious of it. This makes A Spot of Bother at once gruelling, precise and mawkishly sentimental, but it also makes us unsure, as folk stories do, which is the more telling.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
A bittersweet and at times hilarious look at chaos theory in action.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Heather Birrell
Where the novel succeeds brilliantly is in its uncommon, unpretentious willingness to capture the intricacies of communication between children, parents and lovers, without resorting to easy cynicism, following complex everyday family dramas through to provisionally happy resolutions.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Jennifer Haigh
A deft, engaging comedy of manners.
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Favorable
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PopMatters Mark Haddon
Holds up just fine. Haddon shows that despite being told countless times in other forms, what the most mundane of family dramas was missing was his empathetic voice.
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Heller McAlpin
Although not as startlingly original as his lauded debut, A Spot of Bother snaps, crackles and pops with humor and pathos as Haddon depicts family members driving one another crazy.
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Favorable
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New York Observer Louisa Thomas
[Haddon's] dry, nimble style is pitch perfect, capturing the hectic anxieties of a family constantly teetering on the edge between respectability and humiliation; his restraint balances the excesses of the family high jinks. It's a style that, like the Halls, operates by omission and understatement. [18 Sept 2006]
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Whitney Pastorek
In trying to follow four major emotional crises, Haddon sometimes makes clunky leaps in perspective. If "Curious Incident" was a laser beam trained on one fascinatingly flawed character, A Spot of Bother is a shotgun blast.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Haddon subtly pulls it all together with sparkling asides and a genuine sympathy for his poor Halls...Great fun. [17 July 2006, p.134]
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Mixed
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Kirkus Reviews
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.
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Mixed
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San Francisco Chronicle Rachel Howard
It's a pleasant comic caper, the literary equivalent of a night spent watching a romantic comedy. There's nothing wrong with it, but nothing hugely memorable, either.
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Mixed
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Wall Street Journal Frances Taliaferro
The surprise is that after spending a few hundred pages with these not- awfully-lovable characters, you come to regard them with something like affection.
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Mixed
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The New Yorker
Haddon has a deft comic touch, but he pushes his characters too hard toward epiphanies, and in the end this antic farce is merely affable, without surprises.
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Mixed
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The Onion A.V. Club Tasha Robinson
Eventually, he hits a rhythm that turns dozens of tiny personal cliffhangers...into a lumpy but genial compulsive page-turner. But first, Haddon has to yank his audience far enough into George's head that they care about the people around him. The journey there could have been much smoother.
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Unfavorable
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Village Voice Alexis Soloski
Though he mercifully interrupts George's torments with chapters devoted to other members of the family, these sections function mostly as reprieve, never inducing the same stomach-churning immediacy or interest.
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Unfavorable
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Daily Telegraph Charlotte Moore
A Spot of Bother is too long by at least a third. Momentum is dissipated by the stop-start narrative style and by a series of false climaxes. It is wry, warm-hearted and entertaining, but it's flabby where "The Curious Incident" was taut, jaded where the other was fresh.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Janet Maslin
The author’s effort to treat this abundant ordinariness as something extraordinary never works. And the book’s comically commonplace touches are too weary to seem like anything new.
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Unfavorable
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Houston Chronicle Barbara Liss
Unfortunately, we are able to see to the end of the book halfway through, and some of the author's set pieces already feel like used goods.
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Unfavorable
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Sydney Morning Herald Mindy Laube
While the characterisation can't be faulted, A Spot of Bother fails to fulfil its early promise. What initially shapes up as a disquietingly soft stab in the human heart turns obvious and formulaic.
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