Review - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

[jack]

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time[1]" by Mark Haddon

This is a great book. Read it now :) It's technically children's book, told from the point of a teenage boy with Asperger's[2] Syndrome. It's not very long, but gripping all the way through, partly because of the slightly simple style.

It does a wonderful job of making the problem seem PART of him, not just something tacked on, but all the same, a part he wished he didn't have. And he's intellegent and brave despite or with it, not a victim. One part that nearly made me cry is when he's explaining how he counts cars. If he sees four red cars on his way to school, it's a bad day, and he might not speak, and not eat lunch. It he sees four yellow, it's a good day. His teacher asks him why a rational boy like him does this, and he says that office works think it's a good day when the sun shines, even though they're inside. His way is less arbitrary than that. It's *understandable* yet also *tragic*.

The other thing is that a lot of the things he does I see in a less extreme form elsewhere. I have been slightly excessive. His habit of including all the associated information even if not really useful I thought was an endearing trait in, say, Cryptonomicon, but here you can see it taken more to an extreme, and how it must be awful *having* to do that. In fact, a lot of the traits geeks share, just nowhere near as much (eg. he repeatedly doubles in his head to calm donwn - who hasn't, if not as *far* as him :)).

And the plot isn't as simple as you might think from the first few pages, and Christopher succeeds in the end with and despite his problems. Has anyone else read it?

[1] Should "time" be capitalized?
[2] Though as someone on another message-board put it: "Couldn't they have found a name, for a disease that'll get kids teased a lot *anyway*, that doesn't look like it should be pronounced 'Ass-burger's'"

PS. Discworld fic should be finished any day now. Anyone have a good generic title involving the guards or death?

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

you know what? I read that book. Twice. I took it on the train when I went to edinburgh last, and I finished it by about newcastle so I ended up reading it again on the way back from edinburgh.

I didn't like it either time. Mostly because having the image of a dog with a fork stuck right through it squicked me right through the book.

I don't think I've doubled. I've done the two times / three times table when trying to keep walking at the end of a D of E expedition with very sore feet. I used to try and send myself to sleep with the seventeen times table. But not doubling.

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

Graveyard Shift.

[nakedtoes.livejournal.com]

I thought it was good, though I did wonder about it being a children's book - what age exactly did they want? I tried doubling after reading Ender's Game but it never really worked for me - again, more likely to go with times tables or, my favourite, squares.

Mathmo geeks united!

[theinquisitor.livejournal.com]

I wasn't all that taken with it. The writing style was both novel and interesting, but ultimately, it worsened the book for me. I'd probably have enjoyed it more as a short story.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

I finished it last week. a) Not a kid's book and b) I recognised lots of habits like doubling.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I wasn't that taken with it. It had lots of good points, and was very readable, but it was such a stereotyped view of aspergers.... Having had a mother work with adults with autistic spectrum stuff for years, it seemed a bit over simplistic (in its charactorisation, not its style)