What: Eight members of an extended and semi-estranged family take a week-long holiday together in the English countryside. Author Mark Haddon does a killer job getting inside the characters' heads, down to the books humming in their brains, even as he makes it clear that the characters will always remain, to some extent, completely incomprehensible to one another.
Comparable to: Haddon also wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother. This is closer to A Spot of Bother, but instead of focusing on a family spreading out, it's about a family turning in.
Representative quote: "Behind everything there is a house. Behind everything there is always a house, compared to which every other house is larger or colder or more luxurious."
How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able.
Connections to previous Wreckage: The Red House was part of List #22: A Few of the Best Books I Read in 2012. Haddon's A Spot of Bother was Rec. #27.
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