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

   

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

Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries

Publish Date: May 1, 2003

Rating: 4/5

Summary(blurb): Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, fifteen-year-old Christopher is autistic and everyday interactions and admonishments have no meaning for  him. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his picket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructed universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of of his favorite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally. 

**This book review contains spoilers for this book. If you still want to read the review, go ahead. However, I strongly recommend you to read this book before reading my review.

When I first saw three copies of this book on the shelves of the secondhand bookstore(that I always go to), I wasn't sure if I would like it. Turns out, it was only because I hadn't read the blurb first. Seeing the books on the shelves happened about three weeks ago (maybe more), and I finally read the blurb on my last visit and decided to get the book. On reading the blurb I thought it would be an interesting murder mystery-- a hyperlogical autistic literal boy investigating the murder of his neighbor's dog-- but in the middle of the book, one startling discovery went boom and turned the whole book into a family/relationship/trust/love story. Not exactly what I expected, but still good nonetheless. 

This book is about an a 15-year-old boy with Aspergers syndrome (although only referred to as autism in the blurb and simply as Behavior Problems in the book itself) named Christopher. The plot of this book is straightforward at the beginning, but turns around about a hundred and twenty degrees after Christopher discovers the letters from his mother (who he believed to be dead thanks to his father) yet stays equally clear and straightforward. This is probably because the first person narrator of the story Christopher has a hyperlogical objective mind, which is why he writes exactly what happened and the "interesting parts", as instructed by his teacher Siobhan. Anyways, thanks to him the narrative stays straight and comprehensible.

Christopher is an impressive character, and using such a person to narrate the story was quite a good premise for the story. He has photographic memory and a brilliantly observant and logical mind. He is great at mathematics since math problems always have straightforward answers, as well as physics which share those qualities (but maybe not quantum astrophysics). However, he is unable to imagine anything-- he cannot create fiction in his mind, and he cannot understand thinking of things that are not real. He cannot read information from facial expressions, and so even has a diagram with faces to help him decipher facial expressions. These qualities, combined with the more autistic qualities of hating touch, screaming anywhere when severely dissatisfied, and hating loud noises and many people make for a very unique narrator. 

Another thing about Christopher is that he "always tells the truth" and holds truth as a very important aspect of relationships-- he becomes very frightened of his father after finding out he hid the truth about his mother being alive, as well as the fact that it was him who killed Wellington (the dog). He always keeps promises and says that he "can't tell lies": 

"A lie is when you say something happened which didn't happen. But there is only ever one thing which happened at a particular time and a particular place. And there are an infinite number of things which didn't happen at that time and that place. And if I think about something which didn't happen I start thinking about all the other things which didn't happen."

However, Christopher takes everything he promises literally and subsequently finds ways to subtly break the promise, as seen by this passage: 

"And then I did some reasoning. I reasoned that Father had only made me do a promise about five things, which were: 

- Not to mention Mr. Shears's name in our house 

- Not to go asking Mrs. Shears about who killed that bloody dog 

- Not to go asking anyone about who killed that bloody dog 

- Not to go trespassing in other people's gardens 

- To stop this ridiculous bloody detective game 

And asking about Mr. Shears wasn't any of these things."

Here we can see that Christopher thinks up ways to maneuver around promises by taking them literally-- he's not being totally truthful in his promises. He's what's called an unreliable narrator, because of this as well as because his interpretation of the world is what he tells us in the book (and his interpretation isn't always the truth about what's happening). However, the story he tells is straightforward, even though it flipped around at the second half. 

About the second half, I did not expect it in any way; the mystery of who killed the dog was solved too quickly via the criminal confessing to the crime, and only one of the clues were revealed before the big reveal (after Christopher's mom left Mrs. Shears had come over quite regularly). And then came the Traveling To London To Live Wither Mother Who Apparently Was Alive part, which I'm sure was long because it was such a new and difficult experience for Christopher, but not much happened there except for Christopher accidentally succeeding in escaping the police and reaching his mother safely. After that, all that happened can be summed up in three phrases: family feud, A-levels, and family truce. Christopher finds his mom's presence reassuring again, but insists he and his mother go back to his hometown to take his A-levels. His mother shows the same qualities she apologized about in her numerous letters to Christopher-- impatience and a hot temper-- but eventually 

In conclusion, I liked this book a lot but and enjoyed the totally unexpected curveball thrown at me, but it's not as good as a five-star book. The character is interesting and unique, but it felt like neither the murder nor the family problems were delved into deeply. It's like the author tried to write two books in less than 250 pages-- it might have been better if it came out like a series, with the murder being the focus of the first book and the family story being the focus of the second. 

 

I would recommend this book for grade 6 and up, there's some cursing in this book and if you're not old enough you won't know some of the concepts Christopher is talking about. Though he may be autistic, he's still fifteen.

Rating: I would give this a 4/5. Nothing less, nothing more.