So I’ve sampled some of Mark Haddon’s work before in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and was excited to find a new book from him to explore. Marked as “brilliant … very funny” on the cover, the book was neither. Even the boring David Nicholls – Us had more going on in terms of marriage, life choices, filial acquiescence and character development.

George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can’t be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie’s deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip. Ray is just not right for Katie – because * drumroll * – he’s too stable. Has a good job, loves his future stepkid and has a good set of morals on him. Katie doesn’t love him but loves the stability he brings and that’s why she chose him as her husband.

And George – he’s uber scared of dying so the rash that he has on his body he feels is the big C – cancer – and just scares himself sick. He needs his family to drag him to the doctor to see that it’s no big deal – just eczema.

At 57, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden and enjoying the freedom to be alone when he wants. But then he runs into a spot of bother. That red circular rash on his hip: George convinces himself it’s skin cancer.

The planning for these frowned-upon nuptials proves a great inconvenience to George’s wife, Jean, who is carrying on a late-life affair with her husband’s ex-colleague.

The Halls do not approve of Ray, for vague reasons summed up by their son Jamie’s observation that Ray has “strangler’s hands.” Jamie himself has his own problems — his tidy and pleasant life comes apart when he fails to invite his gay lover, Tony, to Katie’s wedding.

And Katie, a woman whose ferocious temper once led to the maiming of a carjacker, can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob.

Unnoticed in the uproar, George quietly begins to go mad. The way these damaged people fall apart — and come together — as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s non-hilarious and disturbing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.

I found the book boring, set too much on an intimate level with the Halls and, us, as readers, privy to their thoughts – some are homophobic, some are just mean, but that’s how people are. And I don’t see how this book is supposed to be funny. It’s pretty dramatic to me. A woman marrying with her head and not her heart – much like women in the 1800’s chose their husbands – a good provider. She is always looking for the next best man to sink her talons into and much like her mother (who cheats on her sick husband), she just wants her cake and eat it too.

It’s a tedious read about who did what and said what to whom and went where and thought about what. It’s so damn boring. I wish there was a murder in there at least so it would be nice to see it unfurl but the slow burn didn’t do it for me. This is going into the charity bin.