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

Date Published: 2003, Vintage.
ISBN: 1-4000-3271-7
# of Pages: 226

My mother's friend gave her a bunch of books he didn't want anymore, and the last time I visited I rummaged through the books that she wasn't interested in and was going to give away herself. I remembered that I'd heard a lot of good things about this one, but it wasn't really a subject that I was interested in. I decided to give it a shot anyway, and I really wasn't disappointed.

The story is from the point of view of an autistic child, Christopher, who discovers that his neighbor's dog has been murdered. This disturbs him, and he decides that he will be a detective and figure out who committed the murder and why. This gets him into all sorts of trouble and eventually his father forbids him from asking anybody about it anymore. This relatively small event precipitates an absolutely astonishing and heartbreaking snowballing of events that drastically changes this boy's life.

There were parts of this story that really affected me emotionally, and I find it very easy to identify with much of the boy's reasoning and thoughts. The disjointed narrative actually made me clamor to continue reading, rather than interrupting flow it really just made me eager to jump from one thing to the next. Haddon censored nearly nothing, but the narrator's perspective made it difficult at times to really decipher what was actually happening, as his inability to appreciate certain emotional responses and details made some things unclear. This just made the book more interesting, however.

Though they were relatively incidental bits and pieces, I enjoyed reading about things that were important to Christopher, such as his feelings about colors, textures, the way the world is organized, etc. Some of his observations were so spot on that I couldn't help but laugh. I especially liked his explorations on the topics of religion, reality, superstition, the arbitrary nature of most emotions and decisions, etc.

One unexpected touch was his dedication to his pet rat, which reminded me of Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, which actually might be due for a re-read. It's really been since junior high or something preposterous like that.