The Book Lady’s Blog

This is my third book for the Book Awards Challenge. 

Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is writing a real-life murder mystery book, but it’s not about a person. As the star detective, Christopher is investigating the murder of his neighbor’s dog Wellington, whom he found stuck through with a garden fork behind the neighbor’s house. Christopher’s investigation is thoughtful and methodical, and his story is written in chapters that are numbered not sequentially but by the prime numbers.  Christopher knows all of the prime numbers up to 7,057.  And, by the way, Christopher has autism.

Christopher narrates his story in a voice unlike any I’ve read in contemporary literature. He is sufficiently detached from his thoughts and emotions to examine them and think about them logically, and he understands that he is different.

I sometimes think of my mind as a machine…It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside.

Just as other people have a hard time understanding Christopher, he often finds it difficult to understand them. He does not understand human emotions and is confused by figurative speech.

I find people confusing.

This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using many words…

…The second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors.

When things are not quite to his liking, Christopher becomes anxious and resorts to groaning and playing mental games with numbers to help him calm down. He does not relate to other people very comfortably, but he is very skilled in math, and his brain seems to be a sponge for facts and trivia.  He tosses in interesting facts and trivia (and more than a couple complicated math problems) throughout the narrative, allowing us to better understand how his complicated brain works.

My memory is like a film. That is why I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like, because my memory has a smelltrack which is like a soundtrack.

When Christopher’s investigation into Wellington’s untimely death reveals shocking information, he runs away from his small-town home and hops a train to London. The trip is bumpy and entertainingly eventful, though it is also uncomfortable in parts (for both Christopher and the reader), and it gives us yet another glimpse into Christopher’s mind and how it is that he functions in the world and makes sense of things the rest of us understand without even having to think about them.

The story of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is interesting and moving, but it is ultimately secondary to author Mark Haddon’s intelligent, inventive, utterly unique narrative technique. In Christopher’s stream-of-consciousness writing, Haddon gives a voice to autistic children and tells a story that is not only entertaining but insightful and informative. Before he became a writer, Haddon worked with children with autism, and that knowledge and experience is evident within the text and is a key feature of its intelligence and accessibility.

Through Christopher, Haddon does not just tell us about an autistic child’s brain works, he shows us. When Christopher lists of some of his “Behavioral Problems” and includes “saying things that other people think are rude,” he follows it up with a footnote that explains:

People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say “I don’t like you” unless that person has been horrible to you.

In the way that Christopher takes everything literally and approaches life with a mindset that is both incredibly concrete and remarkably abstract, we are able to see the world and social conventions through the eyes of an outsider, and we are invited to think about them in a new way. This is a tricky feat to pull off, and Haddon makes it look easy.

I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I’ve been hearing wonderful things about it for years, and now I know why.  This was a fantastic book, and its length and quick pace made it an ideal one sitting read. I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in autism and education or who is just looking for a good read.  4.5 out of 5.

If you’ve read and enjoyed this book, you might also like Look Me in the Eye, John Robison’s memoir of growing up with Asperger’s.