Family get together 

Mark Haddon is in what must sometimes seem like the unenviable position of having written a first (adult) novel which was, and continues to be, a smash hit. Drawing in part on his own experiences of working with the autistic, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time has become one of those books that anyone who claims to be a reader must know.

His second novel, A Spot of Bother, did not receive the same acclaim, perhaps partly because the subject was a man in mid-life crisis who convinces himself he is dying. It too was wonderful, though — funny, perceptive and moving.

His latest book, The Red House, is in the same mode as the second. It is the story of an extended dysfunctional family which decides, on the death of the matriarch, to try and repair the damage of the past and bind up its wounds. Written from the point of view of everyone — eight voices tell the story — it seems sometimes overwhelmingly fractured, but perhaps this is deliberate —its disjointed form mirroring its disjointed characters.

Richard, a successful doctor (with a court case against him looming) pays for a week’s holiday in a rented house on the Welsh borders, bringing with him his second wife, Louisa, and her angry daughter Melissa. Richard’s sister, Angela, in permanent mourning for the child she miscarried 18 years earlier, is also invited, along with her husband Dominic (who receives the kinds of text messages you don’t want anyone in the family to intercept) and their children, Daisy, who thinks only about God, Alex, who thinks only about sex, and Benjy, a bewildered eight-year-old trying to make sense of the adult world in which he finds himself marooned.

If this sounds complicated, it is.