“It was 7 minutes after midnight.” — First sentence
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is Mark Haddon’s debut novel, and it’s beautifully written in the first-person narration. The story follows a fifteen-year-old autistic boy named Christopher John Francis Boone, who is mathematically gifted but socially hopeless. He is superbly logical and sees everything literally based on patterns, rules and diagrams. You can see this in the way the book is written.
One night, Christopher sees his neighbour’s poodle, Wellington, lying on the grass. He takes a look and finds the poor pooch killed by a garden fork. Mrs Shears, Wellington’s owner, calls the police and has him arrested when she finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms. Christopher’s father immediately comes and gets him out of prison. The autistic boy resolves to solve the mystery of who killed Wellington. His father protests against it. Christopher employs the techniques he learned from reading Sherlock Holmes. He also starts writing a book (this book) detailing his observations and detective endeavours—a project encouraged by his friend and teacher, Siobhan. She says the book must describe only what is interesting, not everything Christopher comes across (knowing his condition). She is the only one who truly understands how to deal with him.
Christopher’s book (or Mark Haddon’s book) is full of illustrations and diagrams. This is one of the things that got me interested in the book in the first place. The chapter numbering isn’t conventional. Each chapter is given its own prime number (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and so on) because Christopher likes prime numbers. He has many other quirky likes and dislikes which you will see as you read the book.
This unusual book takes you into the world of an autistic person. You will read about the disconnection between Christopher’s mind and emotions. In the story, you will also see how his condition affects his parents and as a result of that, a dysfunctional family. Both of his parents try their best, but nobody’s perfect.
I love the book. You really shouldn’t miss out on this one. My colleague, Yee Cheng, recommended the book to me. Thanks very much, YC!
