Red House (original 2012; edition 2012)

Mark Haddon has empathy for many kinds of people. In the Red House, there are two families, linked by a brother and sister. The sister has a husband and three children. The brother has a wife and a stepdaughter. Each character tells his side of the story in jarring segments that don't let you know the point of view has changed until you are halfway through a paragraph, or even already finished with that segment. This does not make deciphering the meaning easy.

Still, I soldiered on because I am impressed with the intention of the book which is to demonstrate how difficult it is for anyone to know anyone no matter how intimately you are attached. The brother and sister remember their childhoods quite differently. The teenage girls might be the most likely to bond yet a sudden incident repels them from each other. The youngest member of the family, an eight year old boy named Benjamin, seems to live in his own world, and rarely tries to say in words what he is thinking. He acts everything out, with violent war games, video games, and fantasies. ( )

I was a huge fan of Curious Incident of the... I recommended it to many others and felt the message to be vital to those of us in education. A new look , so to speak.
But, this book , as it stripped away the layers in a typical? dysfunctional family, left me looking for other things to do rather than finish reading it.
Writing was very good but the story was not. ( )

Meh is the best I can do. I thought the premise was really interesting but the characters were just all so flat and dull. ( )

It took a little while to get into the flow of the story, not through any fault of the writer but because I read it in galley form (via NetGalley) on my nook and it took me several pages to realize that the POV was switching between characters from paragraph to paragraph. Once I became familiar with all the characters, I began to enjoy it much more.

Put simply, The Red House is the story of two families on vacation in the country for a week. Richard and Angela are brother and sister with little in common - they even have different memories of their parents in childhood. Richard brings his second wife, Louisa, and her popular and angry daughter, Melissa. Angela brings her husband Dominic and her children, Alex, Daisy, and Benjy; she also brings along the ghost of Karen, the baby she miscarried nearly 18 years before. "Everyone in their own little worlds," and during this week those worlds brush up against each other, bounce off, return, see each other from different angles.

Haddon again displays his great facility for writing about families from the perspective of each person in them; he has great empathy for his characters. I enjoyed this book very much and would recommend it. Read an interview with the author here:
p">http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/786.Mark_Haddon?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Jun_newsletter&utm_content=haddon

p. 32 How do you remember this stuff? But why had she forgotten? That was the real question.

p. 44 How strange this yearning for being elsewhere doing nothing...What every child knows and every adult forgets, the glacial movement of the watched clock...

p. 108 Every mind at the center of space and time. The fierce little star of now.

p. 168 This lostness? Do other people feel this? Do other people live with this?

p. 171 Everyone in their little worlds.

p. 183 How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again...She stared through the window trying to discern a future that wasn't clear yet.

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The Red House was actually a nice easy read and I was surprised how fast I got through this book; this could have been all the blank pages throughout the book. While I never really connected with this book the writing styles used throughout this book were interesting and almost experimental at times. Some of it worked and some of didn’t, I think Mark Haddon was overly confident when he wrote this book and it seemed to come through in the novel. I’m sure many people will love and enjoy this book and don’t let my opinion stop you from reading it. For me I struggled making that connection and I tried and tried to enjoy this book but it just didn’t quite get there.

Full review found on my blog;
http://literary-exploration.com/2012/05/18/book-review-the-red-house/ ( )