Where do you go if you can't feel at home in your own family? When the people who made you can't fathom who you become? In these three tales of quarrelling clans and fraught reunions, Mark Haddon shows family in its frank, unsparing yet frequently absurd light, and, in doing so charts a stormy course into the crucible of the self.
Selected from The Pier Falls, The Red House and A Spot of Bother.
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George poured mortar onto the square of hardboard and checked it for lumps with the blade of the trowel. CHAPTER 1, A SPOT OF BOTHER
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(@vintagebooks, 4 April 2019, ebook, 185 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @BorrowBox)
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I'm a fan of the author so was delighted to stumble across a book I hadn't read before. Family actually contains extracts from his other work that share thematic similarities, in this case the idea of family and what this means to different people. Aside from the story Breathe from the story collection The Pier Falls the book contains an extract from two novels I've already read, The Red House and A Spot of Bother. I didn't actually read the blurb and if I'd known this I wouldn't have bothered. I wanted to read new work from the author. I found it strange to include extracts from novels in this book and I was a bit disappointed overall. I did enjoy the extracts in isolation but wouldn't have borrowed the book if I realised it didn't contain any new material.
