The Red House

February 27, 2012
Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) sets his sights on the modern social novel with a seriously dysfunctional family. Radiologist Richard, newly remarried to Louisa, who has something of a “footballer’s wife” about her, hosts his resentful sister Angela and her family at his vacation home in the English countryside for the week. Both Richard’s new wife, and her cold-blooded 16-year-old daughter, Melissa, arouse the attentions of Angela’s teenage children: son Alex, and daughter Daisy, whose sexual curiosity might lead her to trouble. Angela’s uninterested husband, Dominic; their youngest son, Benjy; and the lurking ghost of their stillborn child round out the family. But most of all there’s the universe of media—from books and iPods to DVDs and video games—that fortifies everyone’s private world; intrudes upon a week of misadventures, grudges, and unearthed secrets; and illuminates Haddon’s busy approach to fairly sedate material, a choice that unfortunately makes the payoffs seldom worth the pages of scattershot perspective. Characters are well-drawn (especially regarding the marital tensions lurking below facades of relative bliss), but what emerges is typical without being revelatory, familiar without becoming painfully human. The tiresomely quirky Haddon misses the epochal timbre that Jonathan Franzen hit with Freedom, and his constantly distracted novel is rarely more than a distraction itself. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander.

Starred review from May 1, 2012
A familiar premise inspires surprising and deeply moving results, fulfilling the British novelist's considerable promise. Haddon became a literary sensation with his debut (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 2003), a critical and commercial success which relied for effect on a tricky narrative perspective--a protagonist who was not only unreliable, but autistic. He then succumbed to a severe case of sophomore jinx with A Spot of Bother (2006), a novel that suggested that the debut was the only gimmick that Haddon had in him. What surprises about his third novel is that it's not only his best, it's his most conventional, at least in terms of the plot. Following the death of their mother, a brother and sister, who hadn't maintained much contact and had felt some estrangement, bring their families together for a weeks' vacation. With a spirit that evokes A Midsummer Night's Dream (to which one of the characters compares this idyll), the setup ensures that there will be revelations, twists and shifts in the family dynamic. Angela has three children whom she loves (all detailed richly and empathically), a husband she tolerates, and the memory of a stillborn daughter whom she still mourns (18 years later). Richard, a wealthier doctor who has arranged this family reunion with his sister, has a younger second wife, a career crisis, and a stepdaughter who is as mean-spirited as she is attractive. Where similar novels often devote whole chapters to the perspective of a character, this one shifts perspective with every paragraph, sustaining suspense (sometimes as to whose mind the paragraph reflects) while enriching the developing relationships among people who barely know each other, in a place where "the normal rules had been temporarily suspended." There will be flirting across generations and gender, sexual orientations discovered and revealed, and deep secrets unearthed. "What strangers we are to ourselves," muses one character, "changed in the twinkling of an eye." Yet the plot feels organic rather than contrived, the characters convincing throughout, the tone compassionate and the writing wise. A novel to savor.

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January 1, 2012

Newly remarried and stuck with a headstrong stepdaughter, wealthy doctor Richard tries to mend fences with sister Angela by inviting her and her family for a week's stay at a vacation home in the English countryside. But Angela has a hopeless husband and three cranky kids of her own, and the week serves up secrets and misunderstandings, relentless grudges and dashed dreams. In lesser hands, this could be dreary, but I expect the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to deliver an insightful, delicately tuned, bittersweet account of the contemporary family.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2012
Shortly after their mother's death, wealthy doctor Richard invites his estranged sister and her family to accompany him on holiday in the Welsh countryside with his new wife and teenage stepdaughter. Angela, a teacher grieving in a much less clinical fashion than her brother, convinces her husband and their three children to come on the premise that it's the best, or only, vacation they can afford, and so begins the novel's seven-day dramaeach relative descending on the country manse with an obligation either to invite another or to attend on another's behalf. Haddon instantly engages the reader with his comically intimate portrayals of realistic and knowable, though by and large not wholly likable, characters; and for a week, familial alliances are made and broken enough for a 100-years' war against the brooding, pluvial backdrop. The book's ambition is perhaps greater than the ends it achievesalthough comfortably paced and plotted, the frenetic changes in narrator are often disorientingbut the very many fans of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) will be thrilled to see Haddon on shelves anew.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)