I don't have a load to say about this, except that I devoured it like a suburban housewife with a fresh Woman's Day. It's not particularly engaging or well written, I wasn't smitten with the characters, but somehow, it had me.
Much like his earlier book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, A Spot of Bother is another 'let's talk about mental illness in a light comic fiction setting' exercise. How The Curious Incident won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award I will never know, but I'm pleased to report that I don't think the bothersome spot has won any such accolades.
The verdict: It's pretty meh. There are better, more engaging and more interesting ways you could spend your time, and there are far more insightful ways you could learn more about or engage further with mental illness. That said, if you were stuck down a well and someone dropped A Spot of Bother down to entertain you while they ran to get a ladder, you'd read it before you wiped your butt with it. Much like a Woman's Day.
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Was the moral of this post 'Don't try wiping your butt with a Woman's Day?'
ReplyDeleteThis is the time saving power of the book blog - Amber says book is crap, I never have to worry myself with reading it. Nicely done.
Pretty much: even though the temptation to wipe your butt on Kerry-Anne's face is sometimes overpowering, that shiny paper is never up to the task.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of a book you've enjoyed that I haven't, and the only ones that come to mind is The Lovely Bones, which didn't really grab me, but I think you liked, and Oscar and Lucinda. On that basis, ie, 1:1030394 ratio, I think it's safe to assume that if it fails my test, it'll fail yours!