The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon: Book Review

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Mark Haddon
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Audience: Adult, Young Adult

My Review:

I’m digging up this review from 2009.

So much more than just a “murder” mystery, this is really a story of Christopher’s personal growth. He knows that he’s different, he just doesn’t know how to be any other way. He can’t read people’s faces or body language. He says “I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.” He has certain triggers that severely hamper his ability to live what we would call a “normal” life. There’s the touching thing. And the body language thing. He loathes the colors yellow and brown. He can disappear inside himself for hours at a time. He loathes strangers. But throughout the book, we watch Christopher make progress and grow, and even see his own perceptions of himself, his abilities, and his goals change. These changes would seem small in another character, but we see inside Christopher’s head so well that we’re right there with him, cheering him on as he makes another gigantic step in his personal development.

The book is a little different in a few ways. There’s the fact that we’re inside the head of an autistic boy. But he also includes lots of visuals to illustrate exactly what he means. I enjoyed all of the visuals, but I do realize that might not be for everyone.

I recommend this. I think it falls under my “a little bit of understanding goes a long way” spiel. I feel like I read a good story, but more importantly, I learned something about a character who is very different from myself.

My Synopsis:

Fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone is something of an autistic savant. He can work out amazingly complex math problems, yet if his own family touches him, it sets him into a screaming frenzy. The neighbor’s dog is killed one night and Christopher decides to investigate and find out who is responsible.

Similar Books:

If you liked The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, you might also like my reviews of

• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Purchase:

Buy The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time from Malaprop’s Bookstore in beautiful Asheville, NC or

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