A Spot of Bother

At sixty-one, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting remarried, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased—as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has "strangler's hands." Katie can't decide if she loves Ray or loves the wonderful way he has with her son, Jacob; and her mother, Jean, is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.