The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Rating:
Summary: best on CD
Review: I think the 6 hours of CD listening is the best way to absorb the book since you can slowly get the deatils of what the autistic protaganist is thinking.

By the way, one reviewer notes that the author is wrong about the math puzzle mentioned. The reviewer has also been fooled, along with some mathematicians. I didnt understand it the first time either, but the solution in the book (as Marylin Savant writes) is correct.

Rating:
Summary: started out great and but didn't finish well..
Review: The first 150 pages of this book where great. The story was interesting, smart and funny. The last 100 pages went downhill for me. It seemed to drag from that point forward - you didn't learn any new about the main character and it seemed to get lost in the details of science and math.

Rating:
Summary: Story of children of the better world
Review: I had little knowledge (let me rephrase and say "idea") about autism - as far as remember it is one article in Time Magazine. So some of ideas were extremely twisted and not based on much scientific reasoning. This book changed my views on "Autism" and how I look at it. After reading this book I consider "Autism" more to be a state of mind which is not so common or not prevalent among the majority of the population. Since the laws of good and bad, wrong and right are all written and defined by the vast majority so the features of "Autism" sometime looks to be against all our rules but this book helps us to understand that these features are not against the rules of the nature. After reading this book you will realize that there is certain level of Autism in all of us.
The book is narrated by a gifted kid, who is a math wiz and has a photographic memory. His brain works in series and does not allow much parallel processing but this helps him to focus and concentrate. He excels in math, loves playing chess and trusts his parents. He creates scales for everything and keeps everything in perspective of those scales so he is rational and even rationalizes his little acts of disobedience. His name is Christopher Boone. In recent days I have read two other books which are narrated by kids around the same age (Wasp Factory and The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman) - both were excellent books but this one just blew my socks off. The style of narration is very direct and lucid. The canvas of the story is good - I just loved reading it. Please read this book if you get a chance - it will change some of your ideas, I promise.

Rating:
Summary: So this is what they mean by "page turner"
Review: I devoured this book in two sittings, allowing less than 24 hours to pass between the first and last pages.

I think the trick is the use of autistic narritive. The chapters are very short, even the long ones. Also, almost every other chapter is a tangent to what's happening, "downtime," as it were. The pacing is very close to the way autistic people pace themselves. It prevents the reader from being overstimulated by the action taking place, yet is also interesting enough on its own to prevent the reader from being understimulated. I would recommend this book to both autists and neurotypicals alike.

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable book!
Review: Christopher, the protagonist and narrator of this novel, is a 15-year-old autistic boy, who also happens to be very bright. I guess only someone who is autistic themselves can say whether or not the author "got it right" - but it is certainly convincing. If the book gives an accurate depiction of how an autistic mind works, it is also a brilliant interpretation of those workings for the non-autistic reader. Christopher himself may be utterly incapable of empathy - but anyone who reads the book will empathize with him - and with his immensely likeable and much-tried parents. Christopher doesn't understand emotions - but his disability also means that he is unable to feel sorry for himself, and he is brave and persistent in his attempt to sort out what is wrong with his world. At the same time, the book is very funny indeed. I hope we see some more from Mark Haddon.

Rating:
Summary: Different ways of thinking
Review: This one of those treasures of a book you come across from time to time. Its rise to the fame reminds me of those exquisite low-budget movies that suddenly appear on the scene and capture audiences around the world. Mark Haddon, an award-winning children's book author, originally wrote the Curious Incident primarily for young audiences, not the general adult reader. Yet, the story and the character are anything but simplistic. Not surprisingly, given its captivating story, its moving main character, and unique style, it won literary awards for youth and children's books. Then, something curious happened as it caught the attention and imagination of the grown-ups... Having just won the Whitbread Prize for the best novel in 2003, it has achieved a rare recognition by winning awards across different literary categories.

The story is written from the perspective of Christopher, a 15-year-old youth with ambitions of becoming an astronaut. It is about experiences in his life, his "Special Needs" as an autistic youth and his surroundings. At some level he comes across like a younger child that can only react physically to uncomfortable situations, at another he acts like a very mature teenager who can explain his difficulties and reactions. He applies logic and analysis to help him understand real life problems as intellectual puzzles, such as who murdered the poodle. Given a certain rigidity of his systematic thought processes, he cannot give up on a path once chosen, whether intellectually or physically. The resulting problems have to be faced, whatever. If his parents could have read his book, they would have had a much easier time coping with him.

For me Haddon's book is a gem for a number of reasons. It is very real and touching story of a very special teenager that pulls the reader right into it and along with it. Christopher's ability to observe his surroundings and himself and describe his thought processes in "his" book allows the reader insights into a personality that we know little about. Haddon describes this environment where autism makes life complicated for Christopher and difficult for his parents with great care, yet he does not allow the special situation to become overbearing. He also demonstrates that people suffering from autism have a lot to offer and their special needs may not as far removed from those of the average normal person. It is a question of degree. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Insight into Autism
Review: Christopher's first person account of his story is the best reason for reading this book. If you want to know what goes on in the mind of an autistic teenager, read this book. Mark Haddon is to be commended for his delightful work, and since the book has become so popular, I'm sure the public will understand this developmental problem in a way that doctors and educators will never be able to explain in a better way.

Rating:
Summary: Christopher's Mind
Review: When I read about this book I thought it would be a real Who Done It sort of mystery. Well it's not that sort of mystery. Early in the book the identity of the person who killed the dog is revealed, after that the real story begins. It was fasinating to learn how one particular higher level austic child's mind operates. It was also troubling how having a handicapped child can effect a marriage. This is a very good book.

Rating:
Summary: Whitbread Winner
Review: Hurrah! The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time just won the Whitbread award for best novel of the year!

This impressive little book is quite unique, and I really want to give it 5 stars for sheer chutzpah and genious. But I do have a couple qualms with it that require me to give it only 4.

First, the voice and perspective make the narrator jump off the page. Here's a great example:

"This is what Siobahn says is called a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person answering it already knows the answer. It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question."

And here's another:

"I think [metaphor] should be called lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining an apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about."

The autistic narrator's struggles with any nonliteral use of language (including metaphor, irony, sarcasm, etc.) reminded me much of Jonathan Safran Foer's narrator in Everything Is Illuminated, who simply can't seem to grasp the nuance of idiom in English, his second language. This risky style makes both books incredibly compelling, but, for me, it also makes both books ultimately a little disappointing, perhaps inevitably.

In all, Haddon does a remarkable job of maintaining this difficult device without it becoming too forced or tiresome. (However, I was glad that the book was short. I'm not sure how much longer it could stay fresh and interesting.) This unique voice and perspective provides an interesting access to the story and naturally highlights significant developments in the plot, which might otherwise have slipped right by unnoticed.

The downside of this perspective is that it is heartbreaking to spend a whole book with a character who can't actually feel (or at least express) the emotions that I, as a reader, require for a completely satisfying story. Though there is some resolution at the end of the book, I couldn't help feel the disconcerting paradox that a) the narrator never authentically feels or understands the motivations of the people who love him (or even what love itself is, aside from protection and providing food) or his own emotional response to problems that befall him and his family, and yet b) he is obviously affected by these complex issues, yet he never really comes to terms with them.

In the end, I felt the most empathy for the boy's father, who feels the weight of everything enough for both him and his son. I'm sure I'm not explaining this well at all. As I say, perhaps this dissatisfaction is inevitable, given the structure of the book. Perhaps it's built into the book to show how hard autism is on the families. I guess I just wanted, just once, to hear the narrator be able to say, "That made me feel sad." That would have been enough resolution for me.

A final aside: after the narrator states early on in the book that "this is a murder mystery novel," I was mildly disappointed a few pages later to discover that it actually was not a murder mystery novel. Of course, my reaction isn't really a criticism of the book. For the most part, after I realized what was going on, I liked the precedent that this deception set and was happy to be led by the narrator throughout the rest of the book, even if (perhaps especially because) he couldn't be trusted to give me the whole story.

Rating:
Summary: The Inner Life of An Autistic Character
Review: This was a fabulous book. As you probably already know, it's a novel narrated by an autistic teenage boy. The choice of point of view here is wonderful, and I found it refreshing to be drawn into his mind, which is supremely logical and literal, and to see how he dealt with messy human relationships, emotional situations and the chaotic world. Even though I have only rudimentary knowledge of autism, I think the story helped me undertand it slightly better after experiencing the "inner life" of the autistic narrator for 200 pages or so. Overall, this was a short, entertaining, insightful light read, which moved along quickly (I finished it about a day). I highly recommend it.