The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Rating:
Summary: Hesitant but won over
Review: At first hesitant to read this book, I eventually found myself engulfed in one of the most wonderful stories to come out in a long time. My hesitation dealt with the fact that the subject was a) an autistic child, and b) he was somewhat of a genius with math and physics. None of these subjects really interested me, but what Haddon does with them is amazing. Amazing, riveting, disturbing, funny, warm, and above all, human. The only real angst provoking aspect of this book is that I want to lend it to friends, yet can't seem to part with my own copy.

Also recommended: McCrae's "Bark of the Dogwood" and "The Life of Pi."

Rating:
Summary: But the dog did nothing in the night.
Review: I became interested in reading this book after it won prize upon prize upon award in 2003 and 2004. The book effectively straddles the line between young adult and adult fiction and has accrued praise from both age groups. So I picked it up, read it, and can now faithfully say that it is unlike any other book I have read before. Books about various mental illnesses and problems abound in the world. This, however, is the first book I have ever read that places the viewer squarely in the head of a boy quite like Christopher. A fifteen-year-old autistic boy.

Christopher lives will his father in Swindon, England. His life is very comfortable and he is looking forward to taking his A-level maths soon. Fifteen is a young age to be taking such a test, but Christopher is particularly good at math and physics. Being autistic he has difficulty understanding other people and understanding their emotions and intents. When Christopher finds his neighbor's dog dead, he decides to do some detective work ala his hero Sherlock Holmes. What Christopher doesn't understand, however, is that though he may believe himself to be similar to Sherlock, he cannot deny his own emotions when the mystery comes shockingly close to home.

I do not know much about autistic persons. So in truth, I can't say whether or not this book is particularly accurate in its depiction of a fifteen-year-old autistic kid. What I do know is that Haddon is remarkably sympathetic towards his subject. The challenge in writing this book was to make Christopher someone you sympathize with, even as he makes incorrect assumptions and violent gestures towards those he loves. You can see where Christopher is coming from, even as you determine where he makes his mistakes. This is especially impressive when you consider that Haddon is writing a character that cannot hug, understand love, or figure out how to care for others outside of himself.

However, it is the depiction of those who love Christopher that is Haddon's greatest strength. How rare it is to see things that your narrator cannot see. To understand where people are coming from even as you see them through the eyes of a boy who is incapable of understanding. No adult in this book is perfect, but they are all interesting and real. You comprehend the motivations behind each person's actions. They are all capable of inappropriate anger and exasperation. Best of all, the book is incredibly interesting. Broken up by maps, graphs, equations, pictures, and drawings, the book is continually drawing your eye in a variety of different ways. It is a wonderful story for anyone into math, but if you are like my pretty self and don't particularly care for sums it is still a wonderful read. A keeper.

Rating:
Summary: Not enough stars
Review: This book reminded me of another I recently read: "The Bark of the Dogwood" by Jackson McCrae. Both books deal with a precocious child that is overly intelligent, yet handicapped in some way. And both are a mystery of sorts with great writing and unusual form. I would highly recommend both books, along with another I recently read--"The Birth of Venus" (although that book is totally different from either of the aforementioned books.

Rating:
Summary: Just the Facts
Review: When fifteen year old Christopher Boone is accused of murdering his neighbor's dog, Wellington, he decides to find the real killer himself and write a mystery novel about it. While this might not seem to be a good premise for an engrossing story, when you consider the fact that Christopher, the narrator, is autistic, it becomes very interesting.

Because of Christopher's autism, he can describe emotion, but he can't feel it himself. Although he can't feel sadness at Wellington's death (or anger at being falsely accused), he does know that "something's wrong" with the situation.

Making use of an autistic narrator might have come off as "just another gimmick" in the hands of an author less skilled, but Mark Haddon uses Christopher's lack of emotion in such a skillful way that THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME is truly engaging, poignant and even, at times, quite funny.

Although autistic and unable to understand the complex world of emotions, Christopher is a brilliant student of mathematics and logic, both of which he does understand very well. In fact, the only "gimmick" in this book might be one having to do with mathematics: that of assigning prime numbers to all the chapters rather than numbering them sequentially, but that's such a quibble it's barely worth mentioning.

Christopher's sleuthing is extremely thorough and, surprisingly, we do end up with a very emotional book. We get to experience the emotions of those around Christopher, filtered through Christopher's detached point of view. As the novel progresses, we care less and less about who killed Wellington (although we do learn the answer to that question) and more and more about Christopher and his family. Christopher provides us with all the facts but the narrative is filled with holes and spaces and the reader must do the interpreting.

To his enormous credit, Haddon hasn't "romanticized" or "sentimentalized" Christopher. He's created a fully fleshed out human being and he hasn't tried to conceal the "obnoxious" side of autism. Christopher is often "difficult," to say the least, but we don't dislike him for it because we understand him; we know him and we know why he does the things he does. I learned more about autism from this novel than from any "informative" non-fiction article I've ever read.

With this book, Mark Haddon pulled off what many "seasoned" writers fail to do. He has given us an engrossing and supremely honest book and he made us care about the narrator without ever slipping into the maudlin. That said, I have to add that I really didn't enjoy reading the book, but even though I didn't enjoy it (simply because of personal preferences), I can be objective and I can be fair. I think there will be quite a few readers who don't "enjoy" this book. I just hope they can recognize the artistry and masterful skill with which it was written.

Rating:
Summary: GENIUS AT PLAY
Review: THE AUTHOR USES HIS PRIME CHARACTER, AN AUTISTIC CHILD WITHOUT THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND EMOTIONS, & MUCH MORE, TO ADVISE THE READER FROM THE START, THAT HE (THE AUTISTIC CHILD) IS THE ONE WHO IS WRITING THE BOOK (SUPPOSIDLY A MYSTERY,BUT NOT REALLY). I THOUGHT THAT ALONE WAS A BRILLANT CONCEPT, BUT IT'S ONLY THE BEGINNING.
WHILE THE TEXT IS WRITTEN AS YOU WOULD EXPECT FROM AN AUTISTIC CHILD,IT'S ABILITY TO EXPLAIN TO THE READER EMOTIONAL & OBJECTIVE MATTERS, WHILE STAYING ON PLOT, & KEEPING THE READER ENTRANCED, IS AWESOME.
THE STORY LINE, ALLOWS US TO UNDERSTAND HOW INCREDIBLY INTELLIGENT, CLEAR MINDED, & ANALYTICAL AUTISTIC CHILDREN CAN BE, WHILE AT OTHER TIMES SHOWING US (WITHIN THE STORY LINE) THE INHERENT PROBLEMS OF AUTISM, INCLUDING CONFUSION, FRAILTY, & FEAR.
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO ANY WRITING, BE SURE TO NOTE THE MANY DEAD-ON, 100% CORRECT "GOOD WRITING" TIPS THAT THE CHILD MENTIONS.
THIS IS THE TYPE OF BOOK THAT NEEDS, AND HAS OBVIOUSLY GOTTEN, EXCELLENT "WORD OF MOUTH." WITHOUT SAME, I DON'T THINK VERY MANY PEOPLE WOULD BUY IT. EVEN MARVELOUS BOOK REVIEWS WON'T DO IT JUSTICE. THE REASON IS THAT IT'S HARD TO VERBALIZE IT'S WONDERS. SOMEONE YOU KNOW & WHO'S TASTE YOU TRUST, HAS TO TELL YOU, "DO YOURSELF A FAVOR, GET THE BOOK & READ IT - IT'S A WINNER."

Rating:
Summary: Very enjoyable (thumbs up)
Review: Prior to reading this book, I knew little about autism but I have seen such children and their behavior before... which makes it easier to relate to the book. I must say, the book is a delight! It's different, light and interesting because its evolving around a boy who's not our usual Tim or Jim in high school..started with an unusual dog murder..very interesting ideas really! Good book! I just kept reading it non-stop!!I love the book and I definitely recommend it.By the way, the hardcover was worth it. Nice :) Enjoy the book!

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Mark Haddon's debut takes the form of this startling fresh and new book that is destined to climb higher and higher on the bestseller lists as the months pass. Reminiscent of THE LIFE OF PI or McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, the point of view and telling of the story is similar and equally as unique. But what is so amazing about this book is the way the author handles his material, for some of the ideas and scenes in any other author's hands could easily turn grotesque and off-putting. Not so with THE CURIOUS INCIDENT.

Well-paced, with excellent characterizations and food for thought like nothing else out there, this is the top of the list in my opinion. Would also recommend THE SLEEPING FATHER and THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed. It's not a mystery novel at all!
Review: I would not recommend this book to anyone not because it is a bad novel. It isn't. It reads well. The concept is interesting: narrating the novel through the POV of an autistic boy. The chapters are cleverly numbered by prime numbers, which ties in with the novel. It has interesting illustrations and diagrams to look at. However, I would not recommend this because it disappointed me and I couldn't, in good conscience, tell anyone to read a book I was disappointed in.

I guess my disappointment lies in the fact that not only did my book club tout this as a mystery novel but also many of the literary reviews I read as well. What I was expecting was an exciting roller coaster ride mystery about an autistic boy trying to find the killer of his neighbor's dog and, as he slowly sleuths out the killer, finds himself embroiled in dangerous life threatening situations. Kind of like Tartt's The Little Friend told from an autistic POV.

However, The Curious Incident... is not a mystery in any way, shape or form and because of this, the autistic POV begins to wear thin by the second half of the novel remaining sometimes fascinating yet sometimes tedious. Instead, you get a novel that starts off as a promising murder mystery. At the first half of the novel, the mystery is solved. Or rather we're unceremoniously told who is the murderer of the dog. From that point, the second half of the novel hugely focuses on Christopher attempting to travel to London by himself. A difficult task considering Christopher is autistic, hates crowds and can't stand to be touched by people. I won't tell who the murderer is or why Christopher takes off to London, as these are the only two real surprises of the novel. I will say overall this was a huge disappointment to me. I thought I was getting an exciting murder mystery and instead I got a highly readable family melodrama. Perhaps if this was not pushed as a murder mystery I would have enjoyed it much more.

An interesting read but I wouldn't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Crafted So Well
Review: The actual story line of this book is worth something less than four stars - so why 5 stars? It is five stars because of the way the author crafted the book. I have never read a book where the writing itself was a major component of the story.

Written in the first-person narrative, Christopher, the narrator is an autistic teenager. The story is a fairly simple one. He finds a neighbor's dog murdered, sets out to solve the crime and ends up travelling from his home to London on his own to find his mother. His mother could not handle the pressure of raising an autistic child and the relationships among father, son and mother surpass teh murdered dog as the theme of the plot.

The simple story is imbued with Christopher's considerable difficulties in dealing with the world as an autistic person. The author has crafted the pressures from which he suffers - the near impossiblity of processing much of the stimuli of the world - into the telling of the story. One truly begins to understand and sympathize with the difficulties of autism.

An example is in order. At one point, Christopher is in a London train station. This is a boy who can not stand strange places, crowded places, strange people, being touched, etc. As I read, the pace and the panic became real. I said to myself: "Whoa! Slow down! This is way too..." and it dawned on me. The author had crafted the thought processes of the autistic into the telling. Where I felt I had to slow the reading of the scene because of the unrelenting pressure - Christopher would have been suffering on a much greater scale in living the scene and been unable to slow it down by looking up from a page. This is what I mean by the author "crafting" the book. Much of the tension and conflict of the book was in the way the story was told - the story of an autistic boy's life and the tensions raising him brings on to his family.

I strongly recommend this book for all it says about autism as well as a thoroughly entertaining exercise where the reading is half the story.

Rating:
Summary: There's just no way to describe how utterly cool this book
Review: is. I left it, lent by a sister, for weeks, because she told me it was a story from the viewpoint of an autistic kid. I thought: melodrama, angst, meaningful ad nauseum. Instead, it was just flipping wonderful, took my view of reality and flipped it right on it's head. Really opened my eyes in a very fine way. Almost made me feel like being a little kid, again, the way you saw the grown up world so differently. Wonderful.