Book #59: The Red House by Mark Haddon
Number of pages: 340
Angela and her brother Richard have not spoken to each other in many years, until the death of their mother brings them back together.
They both take their individual families away for a week's holiday together in the "Red House" of the book's title, and it is fairly obvious that there is a lot of tension in the family, mostly stemming from Angela's fractured relationship with Richard, and the fact that several characters seem to have skeleton's in their closets or other personal issues.
We are told, for example, that Angela did not get to go to her father's funeral, and became suspicious of Richard and her mother; we are also told that before her three children were born, she had a daughter who was stillborn, and it seems to affect her mental health increasingly throughout the narrative.
I got this book because of how much I enjoyed Mark Haddon's well-known book, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"; this one took a little while to get into. The style of the book involves switching the point of view quite frequently, so there will be a section focusing on one character, or one group of characters, and talking about their thoughts, even flashing back to past events, before suddenly switching to another character, so it is almost like reading a number of short essays on individual characters.
There are also eight main characters, which feels a bit difficult to keep up with at first, but as soon as I understood about all the characters (and stopped having to constantly flick back in the book to remember who they all were, I started finding the book compelling, although a lot of it seemed to involve characters discover that they had sexual feelings towards other family members.
It did feel like a hard book at times, because of the number of plot strands, and the writing style, and I noticed at the end, that most of the main storylines did not neatly resolve themselves, which might be a reflection of real life.
It is worth reading; you just have to keep persevering, as things really pick up in the second half; it's also a book that it's best read where there are no disturbances, as it really is something that should be read carefully, so that you can take everything in.
Next book: Turning Your Pain into Gain (Mike Evans)