The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage Contemporaries)

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in a long time!
Review: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon

A wonderfully unique book, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon is one of those rare books that comes around once in a blue-moon and changes your perception of how a novel should be written. Haddon changes some of the rules and follows the heart of the narrator and main character, young Christopher John Francis Boone, as he tries to solve the mystery of a dog that was found dead in his neighbor's yard.

Christopher is a teenager, but not your average every day boy. He is an autistic savant. He lacks the skills to blend in socially with the rest of the world, has no sense of humor, and can barely find his way around town despite the fact that he can read. Yet, he is bright and shows a great compulsion for learning, especially in the fields of math and the sciences. In short, he's a genius. He can run quadratic equations in his head, using random variables to find solutions to various problems. He can talk at length about the cosmos, explaining the theory of relativity as if it was child's play.

When Chris discovers the next door neighbor's dog "murdered", he tries his best to search for the truth. The police and Mrs. Shears accuse him of doing the dirty deed, but as Christopher always explains, he cannot tell a lie and tells the policeman that he did not kill the dog. After an altercation that ensues due to the policeman touching him, Chris is consequently taken to the local jail, where his worried father comes to pick him up and take him home.

Thus begins the rather unusual telling of the story of the murder of a dog, and Christopher's search to discover the killer. This is Christopher's book, and it is told in his own unique way. Because of his love of prime numbers, the chapters are numbered with only prime numbers (1,3,5,7,11, and so on). He intersperses the story with chapters on number games, puzzles, and other interesting facts that float in Christopher's head when he needs to get away from the rest of the world, which more often than not confuses him. Yet, despite his fear of strangers and his inability to function in society, he ventures out and plays detective, asking neighbors if they had seen anything strange the night before the murder of this dog.

I highly recommend THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. As I had no expectations when I started this book, it was a lovely surprise to find this unusual style of writing in the form of fiction. At times reading like a math dissertation, other times reading like a journal, it was a different approach to getting to know an unusual character, Christopher Boone. And while he tells the story of the murdered dog, the reader gets to step inside this unusual mind, to discover what makes him tick, what makes him feel, and what makes him love. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME will definitely be on my list of the top 30 books read in 2004.

Rating:
Summary: A Math Teacher's Dream & an Awesome Book
Review: The fictional author of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" was an autistic 15-year-old boy (named Christopher Boone) intent on solving the murder of a neighborhood dog. Since the boy approached life purely with logic and order, he was unable to face any situation with emotions or feelings. This unique viewpoint made for an absolutely original novel (rich with enchanting, honest, and intellectual prose) unlike any other I have ever encountered. Ironically, the complex plot that unraveled during Christopher's detecting might have been more invigorating than some of the best thrillers/mysteries I've read. Until I stumbled upon this book, I had my own manufactured comprehension of autism. My son Joshua attended Nursery School with an autistic child last year, and I observed some of that boy's behavioral traits. Although I also studied autism in my college psychology classes, and I did work briefly with an autistic child at a gifted camp, I really had few opportunities to interact with individuals afflicted with this unusual and often debilitating ailment. Mark Haddon's real-life experience with autistic children allowed him to craft this masterpiece by providing the perspective of a young autistic teenager, not by another author's observations of the exterior physical behaviors, but through the interior workings that composed the thought patterns of the boy's afflicted mind. In many ways, autism provided the perfect mind for detective work because emotions were never a factor during the investigation. However, in other ways, autism created roadblocks that could never be understood by people unaccustomed to this mind-blowing anomaly.

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How does the autistic mind work (paraphrased/enhanced/interpreted from Haddon's book)?

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Non-Autistic Joe:

It is Monday morning and Joe awakens to find it raining and cold outside. As Joe prepares breakfast, he feels a sense of angst because the weather has already predetermined his day's destiny. Backing out of the driveway, Joe initiates the windshield-wipers, turns on the car defrost and breathes out a moan of contention because he knows he is going to have a bad day.

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Autistic Christopher:

On the bus ride to school, Christopher starts counting consecutive automobiles. If he sees 4 yellow cars in a row, he knows he is going to have a black day. However, if he encounters 4 red cars in a row, he knows he will experience a good day yet if he sees 3 red cards in a row, he will have quite a good day. Five red cars in a row will provide Christopher with a super good day. Also, Christopher will never eat food that is yellow or brown.

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Explanation:

The non-autistic mind uses emotions and feelings to predict (along with order and logic). The autistic mind can only use order and logic to make decisions. Non-autistic people regard Christopher's way of predicting good and bad days as illogical even if it does follow some strange order. On the other hand, how does basing good and bad days on the weather end up being more logical than the decision to base good and bad days on the color of consecutive cars?

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Non-Autistic Joe:

Joe's bedroom reflects his personality yet he constantly changes furniture and wall hangings to reflect his current interests. When Joe goes on vacation, he finds it refreshing to encounter new situations, new places and new people. On a recent vacation to South Carolina, Joe sat out on the porch of a civil-war era Bed and Breakfast and reflected on the God given wonders of the world.

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Autistic Christopher:

Christopher's bedroom has never changed since he was an infant. If his Mom cleans the room and moves a poster one millimeter, Christopher is forced to crouch down on the floor and moan for the loss of order to his world. Christopher hates Paris because it contains too much stimuli in the form of new buildings, new people, posters, signs, etc. This overwhelming influx of stimuli drives him almost mad with pain and angst. Christopher?'s only recourse is to crouch into a fetal position and to moan or scream. Nothing about this new place can be credited to God because the autistic mind won't comprehend things that can't be seen. All entities must be tangible. The idea of God is problematical for the autistic mind.
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Autistic Phenomenon (Christopher likes maths):

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Perhaps my favorite component of Mark Haddon's book dealt with the numerous references to mathematical algorithms, formulas, logic and computations. I just might have to put this book on a required reading list for my high school math students. Autistic minds do tend to have certain strengths and anomalies despite perceived deficits. Many autistic individuals possess math brilliance, musical prowess or scientific expertise. Christopher was gifted in "maths" and the book played homage to this unique talent. As a math geek, I was thrilled by the book's inclusion of the Pythagorean Theorem, The Monty Hall Problem, Statistical Analysis, Mapping Algorithms, Game Theory, Relativity, Tessellations, Proofs and Mental Math Algorithms. I have never encountered so many math applications in a pleasure book before in my life.

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Summary:

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Most of you know that I write reviews for the sheer cathartic release it provides me. However, I must go out on a limb (by the way, you can't use metaphors with autistic individuals), and implore you to find this book and read it with gusto over the summer. You will find it rewarding, entertaining and educational. If any of you know anybody dealing with autistic relatives or friends, please tell them of this book. It offers enough insight to make it a must read for anybody dealing directly with autism. Additionally, Christopher's detective work uncovered more than the culprit of a dog homicide; it unleashed raw emotion mainly because the young author was unable to express any of his own. I was moved to tears of laughter and heartbreak while I remained glued to every single word on every single page of this 226-page masterpiece. This is my favorite book of all time. Bravo Mark Haddon!

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My Overwhelming Grade: A+++

Rating:
Summary: A deviant interpretation of a deviant's interpretation
Review: The typical interpretation of this book seems to be that it is a window into the mind of a deviant (autistic). Those who love the book say the author amazingly gets it right, and those who hate it say the author gets it grossly wrong.

For me, the book is something else. It's a window through which we can view ourselves and acquire new insights into the insanity of normalcy. It employs the age-old device of the court jester, the village idiot, the witch, the invader from outer space, or some other deviant as sage or model--paralleled in nonfiction by the Tocquevillian insights of a foreigner into how our society works. So, I think treating this as a book about autists is like treating Orwell's "Animal Farm" as a book about pigs.

As such, I found the book engaging, provocative, and perceptive. A bit like my appreciation for a powerful critique of presidential nonsense. It helped me ruminate about ambiguity, humor, irony, honesty, meaning, and what is important and trivial in the universe. The rest is a plot that (suspensefully and humorously) generates incidents for processing by the interpreter.

My 1-star discount is for a bit of unbelievability. The protagonist seems to know so much about normals and how he deviates from them that his alleged failure to understand normals' presuppositions is somewhat unpersuasive. He knows myriad facts about distant continents and galaxial bodies and is apparently an avid reader and TV watcher, yet subways and escalators are things he has never learned of. And the story is set in the 21st century, complete with computer video games, yet interurban communications are limited to postal correspondence--no e-mail, and no telephone, even when one character is heartbroken and mystified about receiving no replies to a long sequence of letters.

By the way, I got the Adobe e-book version of this publication (partly to see what that would be like). It worked, but some facts seem to remain undisclosed until you have bought the item. 1. It's encrypted, and you are permitted to copy it and read it on multiple computers, but you need to register with Adobe before you can read it on each computer. 2. You can read it with Adobe Reader, but Adobe Reader cannot save your highlighting. To save highlighting, you must read it with (the non-free) Acrobat. (Same as the US IRS's fill-in PDF forms.) 3. If you want to copy an excerpt for a book report or whatever, you need to retype it (or do a screen shot and then use an OCR program), because no text is copiable. 4. The publisher hasn't permitted you to have Acrobat read the text out loud. It seems ridiculous that these facts can't be known to the buyer before the buyer decides which edition to buy, but I sure haven't found them anywhere. Maybe if enough readers wrote the publishers to ask about these questions the publishers would find it saved them money to publicize the answers.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and enlightening read
Review: This book is a very good read, and it is very enlightening on the world of an autistic child. I knew only a little about what it means to be autistic and it was definitely an eye opener to view this mindset. I feel that this story is more like a story within a story- you read about the thoughts and actions of this autistic boy, but soon see through the boy's words and realize the adult reality of what he does not comprehend. I enjoyed Haddon's writing style very much and I definitely recommend this book to others. This book is NOT what I term "brain candy." It is a solid piece of well-written fiction.

Rating:
Summary: I can only say: WOW. What a revelation.
Review: This is, quite simply, one of the best books I've ever read in my life.

I'm not autistic, so I have no idea how accurate this was. However, seeing that one of the spotlight reviews here on amazon was written by an autistic person, it seems as if the author was spot-on in his depiction of the difficulty of being Christopher.

But this book is so much more about being autistic, so much more about a mystery involving the death of a dog, so much more about the journey that Christopher makes. This book has *layers* upon layers of subplots (though they may not seem apparent unless you're an experienced reader and you're looking for them) and twists and surprises. It starts out seeming to be a simple story of an autistic child trying to solve the murder of a dog. That premise, in itself, is an extremely intriguing one, and was what caused me to purchase the book. Imagine my surprise when I quickly discovered that this book had so much more to offer.

This book was about real life. In real life, situations can present themselves as a mystery, and then you find that the situation isn't a mystery at all - that it's really a situation regarding emotion. Then you see that it's not a mystery, it's not a character piece, it may just be a situation of triumph over adversity. Generally in fiction you either have a mystery, a character piece, or a story about triumph over adversity. Rarely do you come across a story that encompasses all of that, and more. It takes an exceptional writer to perform such a task, and Mark Haddon has done it in this book.

This is the kind of book that, when I finished reading it, made me want to go back through several reviews of books that I've given five stars to and reduce them to four. Or at the very least beg amazon to allow me give this six stars. That's happened twice in the last couple of months. First with Million Dollar Baby, and now with THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME.

To say that it is an extraordinary piece of literature doesn't begin to describe it. It is remarkable, exceptional, amazing, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, sensational, stunning, incredible, unbelievable, miraculous, phenomenal, prodigious, and spectacular.

I was moved to tears, and it isn't often that literature does that to me. If you're wondering whether or not to read this book, stop wondering RIGHT NOW. Buy this book.


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: Remarkable!
Review: What a terrific book. The unique narrator gives us a look into the mind of an autistic person and a new way to look at our own reality.

Well worth the short time it takes to read.

Rating:
Summary: A peek into an unusual mind
Review: When you read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", you get a glimpse into the thought processes of an autistic savant. Written in the form of a journal by the teenaged Christopher Boone, this innovative story ostensibly takes us through the boy's efforts to find the killer of his neighbor's dog. But what we really experience is a bittersweet journey of self-discovery for a boy who finds the world a most confusing and illogical place.

Haddon, who has worked with autistic children, does a wonderful job of explaining how Christopher perceives his environment and tries to cope with its perplexities. Examples abound of the contrasts between Christopher's literal, logical thought processes and the more typical imaginative and emotional ones. A powerful illustration of intuition versus logic is presented in a deceptively simple "Let's Make a Deal" probability problem that had me struggling for an entire day before accepting and understanding the answer.

Don't let the thought of an unemotionally narrated story with math problems in it put you off, however. This book is a delight in every way. We still witness the emotional impact of events on the people around Christopher. Although we feel frustrated over his inability to read others, we cheer him on as he manages to get by in the world in spite of his disability. There are humorous touches throughout the book to prevent it from becoming too maudlin.

What more can I say? Read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Lives Up to the Rave Reviews
Review: You may have read (in the rave New York Times review(s) and elsewhere) that "Curious Incident" is a (fictional) first-person account of the life of Christopher Boone, an autistic teenager. He's a math whiz who can't stand to be touched, who groans and screams when approached by anybody except close family, who carries red food coloring with him so he won't have to eat anything yellow or brown. A neighbor's dog is brutally killed with a garden fork; Christopher's journals describe his attempt to solve the crime. (True to his disorder, he uses only prime numbers to number the chapters, with occasional departures from his investigation to describe interesting math problems). His investigation leads him deep into his own family's sad secrets.

But CI is definitely neither a 'disease-of-the-month' type of novel, nor a detective whodunit. You may struggle at first to figure out who the 'bad guy' is, as you might with a 'real' detective novel, only to realize that there aren't any-Christopher's autism seems to bring everyone to the end of his/her rope.

On the other hand, the view of autism is not 'four-handkerchief' tragic, either. Christopher, despite his problems, grows and changes. He proves to be a capable detective; he overcomes tremendous fears to solve the mystery; he even becomes the first student in the history of his school to pass his A-levels.

It is really is more of a coming-of-age family drama, it just happens to be told by the autistic member of the family.

It's a fast read, told with a surprisingly light-hearted, even humorous touch, and the plot carries several entertaining surprises. Readers, please don't turn aside this book because you think it might be 'heavy' or sad. Go ahead and take it on vacation. It's sure to be one of the best books of the summer!