My opinion of Haddon from The Curious Incident... is pretty much intact: ho-hum. Bother is a quick read for 375 pages, there's quite a few chuckles and even one or two pretty poignant things about love and aging (though it hammers the fear-of-your-body-decaying theme into the ground without ever coming close to the poignancy of, say, Philip Roth's Everyman). Problem is it's just so incredibly predictable. Once we've gotten to know the characters (hypochondriac father, philandering mother, gay son and his lover, brash daughter and her fiancé whom everyone assumes is an asshole even though he never actually gives anyone any reason to think so) they just plod on like that, whining and being dysfunctional-lite for 300 pages until the end, which turns out exactly as you'd have guessed 30 pages in. A better writer might have made those 300 pages between setup and resolution fascinating in themselves, but here it's mostly the distance we have to travel to get to the end - ironic for a novel about not letting fear of the ending stop you from enjoying life.