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Summary: "My memory is like a film. I press Rewind and Fast Forward."
Review: Writing this first novel from the point of view of an autistic 15-year-old, Mark Haddon takes the reader into the chaos of autism and creates a character of such empathy that many readers will begin to feel for the first time what it is like to live a life in which there are no filters to eliminate or order the millions of pieces of information that come to us through our senses every instant of the day. For the autistic person, most stimuli register with equal impact, and Christopher's teacher Siobhan, at the special school he attends, has been trying to teach him to deal with the confusing outside world more effectively. At fifteen he is on the verge of gaining some tenuous control over the mass of stimuli which often sidetrack him. When the dog across the street is stabbed and dies, Christopher decides to solve the mystery and write a book about it. His favorite novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, becomes his model as he investigates the crime, uncovering many secrets involving his own family in the process. Innocent and honest, he sees things logically and interprets the spoken word literally, unable to recognize the clues which would tell him if someone is being dishonest, devious, or even facetious. As he tells his story in a simple subject-verb-object sentence pattern, Christopher tries to communicate and give order to his world, and the reader can easily see how desperate he is to find some pattern which will enable him to make sense of it. Christopher's investigations eventually require him to make some remarkably brave decisions, and when he faces his fears and moves beyond his immediate neighborhood, the magnitude of this challenge is both dramatic and poignant. Strange places have always been traumatic for him, and he has difficulties with his emotions. "Feelings," he says, "are just having a picture on the screen in your head." He responds either with logic or with the anger which sometimes overwhelms him as result of fear or frustration, and the reader cannot help aching for him and empathizing with his family. Christopher's coming-of-age story is most unusual, if not unique, and he ends the book a much more mature 15-year-old than he was when he started. With warmth and humor, Haddon creates a fascinating main character, allowing the reader to share in his world and experience his ups and downs, his trials and successes. In providing a vivid world in which the reader participates vicariously, Haddon fulfills the most important requirements of fiction, entertaining at the same time that he broadens the reader's perspective and allows him to gain knowledge. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: I believe Keanu Reeves said it best when he said, "Whoa." This short book is incredible and I give it my highest recommendation, especially to those who love Lemony Snicket books. This book isn't like Snicket books, but it reminds me of them. The narrator is 15-year, 3-month, and 2-day old Christopher Boone, who is inflicted with Asperger's Syndrome and is very high functioning. Haddon captures perfectly the speech patterns of children with this disability and creates a believable and touching character. Christopher and his father live together in a house in Swindon, a tiny town in England with no university. His mother died of a heart attack two years prior. Christopher is very independent, though he has a tendency to walk away in the middle of conversations when they confuse him, punch people who touch him, and brandish his Swiss Army knife when strangers approach him. The story opens with Christopher discovering his neighbor's murdered poodle, punching a cop, and deciding to solve the mystery. What unfolds in just over 200 pages is worthy of major accolades. I'm wonderfully amazed at this great little story of Christopher learning that he is a man.
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Summary: A Search for Truth
Review: Many readers have discussed this novel and its use of a young autistic's voice in unraveling a murder, and other mysteries. While the book is a very absorbing read on that level (and I highly recommend it), the reader may discover fresh insights after the book is finished. What I have not yet seen discussed is the way the young narrator examines the nature of Truth and its relationship to Time, and how the he realizes that Time is nothing but a frame in which to view Truth. Accordingly, Christopher's understandings of numerous Truths in the book change with Time. Past events which Christopher has understood as True are not necessarily so, and in his mind future events are simply Truths that have yet to happen. This realization is masterfully and somewhat unexpectedly (at least to this reviewer) revealed as the book unfolds. As someone whose entire life (past and future) revolves around absolute Truths, the effect of any introduced uncertainty to Christopher's world is shattering. Though I have worked with communication-challenged young people, this book made me aware of a unique perspective on how such individuals may come to understand what is Real and True and reach an understanding of the world which is vastly different from the world that most of us filter, but no less True. It has changed my understanding of perception forever.
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Summary: The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-Time
Review: I lean on Amazon for reviews but have never written one until now. The little boy in this book, Christopher, leaps from the pages to enter the heart and mind of the reader. He does so with tenderness, humor and delight. He stays with you and you are grateful for the author, Mark Haddon, in bringing him to your world of books. I just bought 2 for gifts.
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Summary: Moving story, deep issues, stylistic tour de force
Review: This remarkable novel starts with the murder of an older dog and ends with the naming of a puppy. In between it achieves a lot with extremely simple means. On the surface it poses as the coming-of-age story of the autistic teenager, Christopher. In the wake of a long and distinguished tradition, coming-of-age novels are encumbered by a time-honored set of conventions, which are rigidly observed here, with the marvelous effect of complementing the rigidity of the autistic boy's behavior. As a "red herring", to use Christopher's terminology, the novel starts as a mystery story, but this pretense is dropped midway when the mystery is solved by a confession, in precisely the way the many "clues" dropped along the way led the reader to believe it would be solved. But by then deep issues of style and substance have been raised and cast in an entirely novel light. We are told that an autistic child is incapable of telling anything but the truth, even if not always the whole truth. Given that the story is told in the first person by Christopher, this has remarkable stylistic repercussions: the author is bound to foreswear the use of metaphor, though not of simile. This leads to an occasionally hilarious exploration of a literature without metaphors. Under this constraint, descriptions turn quantitative. A meadow is described by listing the numbers of cows with different hide markings, and in the interest of "truthful disclosure" we are told that the boy is observing the meadow while "weeing" during a car trip. You say "aha now I know how literature that is close to the truth, and as such much more reliable, would look like." Add to this that an autistic child is incapable of understanding human emotions, another crucial ingredient of a good novel, and you are led to say "now I know what literature devoid of any understanding of emotions would look like." And then, when you are through with this novel, you suddenly realize that all its unassailable component truths add up to one big lie. For why should a human being haunted by fears and suffering, as overwhelming as those experienced by Christopher, care about understanding the emotions of those around him? Anyway why should these creatures, subject to the whole usual gamut of human emotions, from love to jealousy, from hatred to revenge, serve as a worthwhile example to him? His pain is much deeper than theirs and in final analysis what he experiences as physical pain of all kinds (in his chest, his head, wherever) is really a gamut of emotions compared to which all the petty emotions of those around him pale. So, accepting the basic premise of this book --- that Christopher understands nothing about human emotions --- is the biggest lie of all and we are back on the territory of novels in which bored capricious women, be it in a French small town or in Russian high society, are driven to adultery, and when despair sets in, to suicide. Cristopher's despair dwarfs that of Mmes. Karenina and Bovary, but he at least has figured out how to groan or take the cubes of integers and thereby to cope and survive. Even what might be thought of at first as a weakness of this book, in the end turns out to be one of its strengths. I have in mind the rigid matter-of-fact style appropriate to Christopher's narration, which starts wearing on the reader after a while. My reaction was one of impatience, of I have seen that, can't you do something else. But then, this going on the reader's nerves is marvelously tailored to make him understand through first hand experience what living with an autistic child feels like, even if only for the short time it takes to read this novel. Rather than simply assuring us that Christopher is intelligent and scientifically talented, the author has him elegantly rendering some beautiful and well-known ideas of mathematics and physics. It is clear that this boy is headed for a life in the sciences, but will his autism stand in the way of his doing original work? Creative work, as has been realized over the years, has an important emotive component. Will Christopher be able to come up with what it takes at the emotional level? To judge by what we know about him from this story, he does have all it takes, and if there is a danger it is that he even has too much of it. Besides being a future scientist, Christopher is known to us as a writer who has us rethinking the description and understanding of emotions in literature and the meaning of truth, or at least of truth as reflected in a work of art.
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Summary: A "SPECIAL" TREAT
Review: "I am in a special needs school, but everyone has special needs", so says Christopher, an autistic teenager who goes to a school for "special" kids but despite his condition is bent on solving the brutal killing of a neighbor's dog. No this doesn't turn into a wild goose chase as your typical detective novel, there is no bevy of ulterior motives, suspects and thrills. Indeed that wouldn't be possible because our little sleuth in this case is someone suffering from Asperger's syndrome.
We are instead presented with the world, the "case", the life from his point of view. And this is the marvellous aspect of the book because the simple yet clever perspectives are riveting. For instance, the boy does not believe metaphors. Metaphors are a way of talking about things in a way that they aren't, so metaphors are basically lies -- you laughed your socks off, it's raining cats and dogs, you are the apple of my eye. Can an apple fit into an eye? At the heart of Christopher's predicament is betrayal. His mother leaves his father. His father betrays him. He simply says, "Why can't you love me? Why can't you be straight?". One one level, our little detective is arrested but on another he is a terrific observer. His dislike for lies about the events he is recounting and his aversion to emotionalizing his observations lend the story a stripped-down precision that enables the author to talk about the big issues of love, mortality, loss, betrayal without sounding contrived. What a brilliant debut from Mark Haddon. I feared I would be treading on a tripwire of sympathy-bombs when I bought the book, but it's a moving, fast-paced read with a very intriguing "plot" that is not burdened by finding proofs and criminals, but by tossing up the absurdities and lies of our lives. Highly recommended, for almost anyone in your family who can read.
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Summary: Utterly original
Review: Christopher Boone, the hopelessly logical yet haplessly clueless narrator of this novel, is a truly unique literary creation. Although brimming with insight when it comes to maths and sciences he becomes clumsy and awkward whenever faced with an unfamiliar social situation or place. You see there's a twist to Christopher that makes him unlike all other narrators: he is a 15 year old boy suffering from autism. Reading this book allows the reader to have a glimpse of his life and how his mind works. The genius and utter realism of this feat lies with the author, who treats the matter with great respect but sometimes brutal honesty. When made uncomfortable Christopher may have a temper tantrum, groan loudly or even lash out with his fists. But it is impossible not to find him likable because Haddon makes you see that this is only part of who he is and shows all of his other attributes as well. A truly 3 dimensional character is hard to find but you need look no further for one. The book's premise is that after a neighbor's dog is killed Christopher decides to do some detective work like Sherlock Holmes (his favorite character). This investigation is an unexpected catalyst in Christopher's life, and he soon finds his strenuously organized existence spiralling out of control. It's really about an intelligent, complex boy awash in a world he cannot understand or control. He is surrounded by many intense emotions and actions and though he can recite thousands of prime numbers he is at a loss to explain them. This book is a joy to read and a heartfelt reminder that we can get over our own obstacles. You won't be forgetting Christopher Boone any time soon.
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Summary: Strange delight.
Review: Christopher, the 15-year-old autistic hero of Mark Haddon's first novel, presents a fresh, touching, and funny take on everyday life. He has no guile, no pretence. He tries to remember the coping skills taught in his special school, but they are just like mathematical formulas to him as he follows the designated steps on how to behave in a specific situation. Actually, mathematical formulas make a lot more sense to him, but for the sake of others he is willing to try. Haddon's prose is simple with a different rhythm-Christopher is obviously just a little bit off everyone else's beat-and you are immediately enveloped in this boy's world. It is like seeing the world through the eyes of a spaceman who has studied earthlings assiduously for millennia and is trying to put his bookwork into practical application on his first visit to Earth. The mystery of the "Curious Incident" has less to do with the dog in the nighttime than it does with the mysterious workings of the human heart. This moving book is not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable book
Review: A remarkable book, offering a remarkable journey through the mind of an exceptional character. The book's hero and narrator, Christopher Boone, could easily have become precious or irritating, but Mr. Haddon strikes a difficult balance. Christopher is wonderfully sympathetic--I suffered with him throughout his difficult and courageous journey to London--but he's also tremendously hard for others to fathom. I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great voice--bad book
Review: I'm still scratching my head over this one. The writing is lovely, and the autistic narrator's voice is fresh, believable, engaging. So why squander such a fully realized voice in a tired minimal plot populated by poorly drawn characters? The father, for instance, is key here, but all the author can think of for him to say is variations on, "Oh, [fill in expletive], Christopher." The mother and neighbors are also ciphers....and don't tell me this is because of the narrator's unreliable perceptions. Banal dialogue is banal dialogue whether or not it's being rendered by an unreliable narrator. Basically, this novel is a case of an author putting a huge amount of work into creating one fine character and his unique voice, and then deciding he didn't need to do any work on other parts of the book. And the voice is done so well, it's almost worth reading. Almost.
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