The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Rating:
Summary: Exotic, eclectic, quixotic, brilliant
Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon is one of the most unique books I have ever read. Essentially it is the "journal" of Christopher John Francis Boone, an autistic 15 year old English schoolboy. One evening he finds a neighbors dog dead, the poor animal having been impaled by a garden pitchfork. Initially Christopher is presumed to be the perpetrator of the crime. It turns out he is, in fact innocent. Christopher resolves to find the actual perpetrator over the objections of nearly everyone about him-except for his school counselor who urges him to go ahead and keep a journal of his discoveries-the text of this book.

To call the book quixotic is an understatement. It reflects the internal schizoid aspects and contradictions of Christopher's mind. He is a brilliant mathematician yet ignorant of the most mundane human emotions. The dissonance extends to even the numbering of the chapters, which are successive prime numbers.

This stands as the best window into the aspects of a disease since I read Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn (featuring Tourette's Syndrome). To read this book is in a very real sense to experience autism. The unique worldview, the idiosyncratic behaviors, the fears, frustrations, misunderstandings of the wider world and withdrawal into the self of the autistic personality are all there. This is accomplished not just through effective writing but also through unique us of fonts and graphics in some cases.

The book also effectively describes the arc of frustration, exhaustion, fear and anguish that goes along with being close to one with autism.

The story is marked by interesting turns and twists that keep one involved. Haddon has a somewhat distanced yet assessable writing style that provides a distinctly-though not overbearing-English voice to the proceedings.

This is an ambitious and accomplished novel. It's amazing that it is the product of a first time author. It is a fascinating, absorbing, brilliant romp of a book that I appropriate for readers of nearly all ages.

Truly a Five Star effort!

Rating:
Summary: An Odd Reality
Review: There is a reality to "The Curious Incident of Dog in Night-Time." It is a pseudo-mystery from the prospective of a semi-autistic child. The plot is brilliant but so perfectly set to fall victim to over sentimentalizing or unintentional humor. Yet Mark Haddon brilliantly avoids those pitfalls with the same panache that Rikki Lee Travolta's "My Fractured Life" and Sue Monk Kidd's "Secret Life of Bees" avoid being parodies of their own worlds. Somehow Haddon creates a real world with his words and maintains it faithfully to rival "My Fractured Life" and "Secret Life of Bees" both. A stellar book.

Rating:
Summary: the most refreshingly inventive book i've ever read
Review: From the moment I heard about this book and its subject matter, I was dying to read it... and I was not disappointed. This murder mystery/ family drama is written from the perspective of Christopher Boone, a fifteen year old with autism, and his voice is so real and authentic that as I read I would forget that intellectually normal Mark Haddon was the author and not Christopher himself.

When Christopher finds his neighbor's dog, Wellington, impaled on the lawn with a garden fork, he is accused of the crime, mainly due to the police officer's misunderstanding of his autistic behavior. Before Christopher's father comes to pick him up from the station and he is exonerated, he decides that, like his hero Sherlock Holmes, he will discover who really killed the dog in spite of being warned not to "meddle".

Christopher is a genius at math and has a photographic memory; yet he cannot stand to be touched. He loves prime numbers and the chapters in the book (which is actually in the form of a journal which his counselor at school encourages him to keep), are numbered that way instead of the usual 1 - 2 - 3. He has a hard time feeling and relating, yet as Christophter delves deeper into the mystery, he learns many unpleasant surprises about his own family and takes many risks to try to make things right.

_The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time_ is exquisitely rendered, complete with drawings and diagrams, in a pure and authentic voice of an autistic teen coming of age. Besides being wonderfully entertaining, the novel is also educational as I feel I now have new insight into a very misunderstood disorder. Completely original and thoroughly enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: So different
Review: Hesitant to read this book after learning it was a "Today Show" pick, I'm glad I disregarded the hype and bought a copy anyway. I'm one for things off the beaten path, and was pleasantly surprised to find that this book was just that. Part "Rainman," part "Forrest Gump" and part "Bark of the Dogwood" this dark and funny tale is so well-crafted that reading it comes as a shock. Most books out there are one thing or another (funny, disturbing, irritating) but "The Curious Incident" has little of everything and is so well put together that you'll be doing double takes, asking yourself where this author has been.

By far the best thing around, please do yourself a favor and read this book.

Also recommended: Bark of the Dogwood by McCrae

Rating:
Summary: Well Worth the time
Review: This book is a great read for a variety of audiences. I took a chance and picked it for our book club and everyone loved it!!! Very well written, it will give you a great overview of autism along with a heart warming story.

Rating:
Summary: Download edition seems to be missing "footnotes"
Review: As many others have said, this is a wonderful book, thoroughly absorbing and one of my favorites from recent years. Others will encapsulate the story better than I.
I purchased this as a Microsoft Reader download.
There are many places in the text where footnotes are implied by superscript numbers. Unlike many such eBooks these numbers are not "live" and do not give access to any further text. While this didn't spoil the book for me, I was left wanting more at its end, so these footnotes would have been a welcome addition. Be Warned.
With that exception I heartily recommend this book. Only the absence of footnotes in this edition prevent me awarding 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing achievement
Review: Meet Chirstopher Boone. Christopher Boone is autistic, and they use the familiar euphemism of "Special Needs" for him. They explain they use such gentle terms, to avoid the hurtful words of the past, like "spaz" and "crip," though Christopher doesn't quite understand how children chanting "special needs" is supposed to be any less nasty. But this is hardly a concern for Christopher, who is much more busy worrying about the nature of black holes and passing his advanced math exam to fret about such mundane things. And he has a mystery to solve, the mystery of whom impaled his neighbor's dog with a garden fork.

Christopher is the narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is obstensibly his attempt at writing a mystery in the style of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Christopher is a great fan of Sherlock Holmes, as he can understand Holmes' deductive reasoning and Occam's razor, yet he dislikes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, due to his belief in the afterlife and fairies. Yet his story is true, for he cannot understand fiction; if something is not true, it is a lie, and Christopher cannot lie, or understand those who do. And because real life, especially when people are involved, tends to veer off in unpredictable ways, the book turns out to be far more than a detective story. Christopher makes discoveries far more disturbing than simply who killed the dog, and ultimately paints a portrait of human weakness that is damning yet sympathetic.

Which is surprising coming from a narrator incapable of truly grapsing emotion. Which is, of course, the gimmick of this book, yet it does not take long to appreciate that this is far more than a gimmick. It has become a cliche for a simpleton to reveal the truth about the supposed-normal people, but this book is no Forrest Gump. Christopher is not, by virtue of his disease, able to transcend the dark side of human emotion, but is rather all the more vulnerable, unable to cope with the lies he discovers, because he has no empathy for those who tell them. A liar is a very dangerous person for Christopher.

Christopher does offer some insight into the human mind, though it is generally not a pretty picture. He reduces the vaunted ideals of human consciousness down to the notion of a humunculus watching a screen in our heads, like Captain Picard watching the big screen of the Enterprise; and surely this little man is just as much a creation of our imagination as Picard. Christopher has faith in science, but how far can the logic of the mind take us, when the creator of Christopher's literary hero is professing a belief in fairies and Ph.D.s can't fathom the Monty Hall problem.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is being called a funny book, and I suppose it is, to an extent. But it is also a dark and depressing work as well. Yet it does have some uplifting qualities; it is painful to watch Christopher struggle with the mysteries he discovers, which become far more personal than just who killed the dog. We feel for Christopher because we can see he does not have to tools to deal with the problems he faces. Yet he does deal, and is emboldened, in the end, by his achievements. And for the rest of us, who sometimes share Christopher's feeling of being overwhelmed, perhaps his achievements give us hope, too.

Rating:
Summary: Fun!
Review: Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Doubleday, 2002)

It is quite likely that no one who reads The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is going to forget Christopher Boone soon after they put the novel down. Christopher Boone, an autistic (so the blurb from Oliver Sacks on the back tells us; all Christopher lets on is that he goes to a special school with "stupid kids") teenager, goes across the street one morning to find the neighbor's dog, Wellington, has been killed with a garden fork. He immediately becomes the prime suspect in the murder, as he's caught with body in hand, and figures it is in his best interests to find out who the real killer is. Finding this out uncovers a number of other mysteries, gives us remarkable insight into math and physics, and lets us get to know one of the more engaging narrators in recent fiction.

What makes Curious Incident work as well as it does is Christopher. "Quirky" is an understatement, but then that's to be expected when one is dealing with the mentally challenged. He is incessantly logical at times (the only student from his school to ever sit the maths A-level, as he plans to throughout the book), but incapable of mapping that logic onto many other areas of his life. He gets obsessed with some things and forgets others for hours on end; draws conclusions on certain parts of the investigation at a whim while digs into layer after layer of others.

In general, with the exception of the screaming and moaning fits, he's rather a lot like the rest of us. Add in a cracking mystery, and you've got a fun novel. Don't let its being picked by the Today Show for their book club fool you, this one will please reading snobs and the great unwashed alike. ****

Rating:
Summary: NOT curiously a great book to hear....
Review: Mark Haddon has written a delightfully engaging novel that catches you from the very beginning and slowly pulls you into the odd experience of it's autistic narrator as he endeavors to be a "detective" and discover who killed his neighbor's dog. Along the way he learns the truth about his mother's death and the odd way a father's love can sometimes express itself.

Never schlocky or succumbing to sentimentality, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT is funny, touching, and challenging. The audio edition is one of the best audiobooks I've listened to in recent past. Jeff Woodman's performance enhances the story throughout the narrative.

Don't be surprised if you find yourself driving out of your way just so you can keep listening.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly imaginative writing
Review: It's very difficult to understand the extremely hard work that went into writing this book. To get into the mind of an autistic person, and then to construct a credible narrative must have been unreal! Once that was done, to make a plot that held the reader's interest from beginning to end, and then to keep the narrative within the "voice" of the main character was truly awesome. This is truly "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius". and should be required reading in schools, particularly writers schools. Budding authors could learn a lot from this book, and readers everywhere would be grateful.