A Spot of Bother

by Mark Haddon

What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older.

You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone’s feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people’s shit. At nine or ninety.

He didn’t want much. Companionship. Shared interests. A bit of space. The problem was that no one else knew what they wanted.

It was the life/school/other-people thing all over again. You turned up at your sister’s house with the best of intentions, you found yourself talking to someone who had failed to grasp the most basic rules of human conversation and suddenly there was a motorway pileup in your head.