The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

While we were in Texas, we picked up a few books at Todd and Brooke’s garage sale, in addition to our new Buddha. One of them was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It is one of those books that I’ve been thinking about reading for a while and it’s on the list of 1,001, so that’s good too.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is told from the perspective of a 15 year old autistic boy named Christopher. When he finds his neighbor’s dog dead he decides to investigate and to write a book to chronicle his investigation. Throughout the book he introduces the reader to his world and the various rules by which he governs his life.

Christopher is a very well drawn character. Haddon has does an excellent job of having Christopher explain himself without making it feel contrived. The explanations of his outlook on life are interesting, such as his philosophy of what the numbers of yellow and red cars he sees on the way to school mean.

Spoilers

While Christopher’s quirks are interesting, the best part of the book is the affect that he has on the people around him, namely his parents. His relationship with his father is beautiful and heartbreaking and only becomes more so as the story continues and the truth is revealed about Wellington’s death. The juxtaposition between the ways in which Christopher’s parents deal with the reality of having an autistic son is fascinating. His father shows tremendous patience in dealing with his son’s condition only to lose his wife and eventually his son. Christopher’s mother finds that she is unable to cope and leaves, losing touch completely with her family.

I really enjoyed this book, first as an interesting look at living with autism and later as a character study looking at the affects of autism on Christopher’s parents.

Spring!