A Spot of Bother

“This is a superb novel.”

Rebecca Pearson, Independent on Sunday

“Wry, warm-hearted and entertaining”

Charlotte Moore, Telegraph

“Succinct chapters, replete with horror, humour and the minutiae of everyday life”

Eithne Farry, Daily Mail

“Amusing and brisk and charming”

Patrick Ness, Guardian

“A delightfully dry comedy”

Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday

“A painful, funny, humane, novel: beautifully written, addictively readable and so confident”

The Times

“A crisp, light effortless read, a sympathetic and sometimes very funny social comedy that, for the most part, perfectly skewers its hapless protagonists and their hopeless pretensions ... Like Nick Hornby... he can bring to everyday life a pleasing solidity and veracity, and he can also place a character with a single, deft phrase”

Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

“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”

Julie Wheelwright, 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”

Tom Adair, Scotsman

“An antidote to cynicism.... Haddon floats insights -sculpted, delicate and precise as origami - on currents of offbeat wit... you don't know whether to laugh or cry at the waywardness of the human spirit, you are salved by the compassion and humour of the tale. The delight is in the detail”

Jennie Renton, Sunday Herald

“It has already been repeat-snubbed by this year's Man Booker judges. They've made a mistake. A Spot of Bother may be a novel about a humdrum family living in Peterborough, told in the third person this time, in deliberately ordinary language. Yet there is more real linguistic artistry, not to mention human empathy, at work, here than in all those poetic prosemongers, the Ondaatjes and the Banvilles. . . . A Spot of Bother is a novel of minor incidents but it tackles big problems. Strange the judges missed that. Again”

David Sexton, Evening Standard