Review: A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – by Mark Haddon

Synopsis: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger’s Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

 

Title: A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Mark Haddon
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9780099450252

Rating: 

This was the first book to come up in our book club for 2014; I remember reading A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at school and it was interesting to see the similarities in my opinions. I still think this is a great book; Christopher, the protagonist, could have easily become an amusing hybrid of Forest Gump and Adrian Mole but Haddon manages to dig deeper to provide an honest, believable account of the mind of an autistic boy.

My enjoyment from this book didn’t come from the plot (which is pretty basic and turns into a TV drama at the end) but it’s nuanced portrait of the challenges Christopher faces. Sensitivity to noise, crowds, colours, being touched is shown in vivid detail. Furthermore, the unemotional writing style made everything all the more genuine. Instead of pitying him, I found myself intrigued by his point of view. In fact, I started seeing the amount of social situations where emotions take over logic and create unnecessary confusion. Maybe we all need to look at things a little more like Christopher does.

A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is definitely something you should read at least once in your life. I’m not sure how well it will do as a book club read but it is definitely something I would recommend