Tuesday 21 August 2012

Book review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-timeThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was my H, in my A-Z of authors. I'd bought the book a while ago, it's just taken me ages to get around to reading it.
The premise is simple, it's told from the point of view of Christopher Boone, a fifteen year old who has Asperger's syndrome. Initially, it's about him trying to solve the mystery of a murdered dog, but that get's resolved pretty quickly.
The book as a whole it addictive, I read it in a few days and once you start reading it's hard to put down. Being inside Christopher's mind in interesting if a little odd. I have no knowledge of this condition so it was very educational for me as well, learning about what was important to him.
There were a few things that I found a bit niggly. For a start, I find it a bit far fetched that the father of a child would tell him his mother was dead. I also found it odd that the mother would not go and visit the child when she didn't get any response to letters she sent over two or so years.
The way people reacted to Christopher also shocked me. For part of the book he was sitting in a London Underground station for a prolonged period of time. At no point did anyone from the underground staff come to check he was okay. Christopher doesn't like anyone touching him and when they do he screams. When this happened with several different strangers, they just left. No one and I mean no one stopped to think that the kid might have a problem. Maybe I think too much of the people in this world, but I like to think that some people would have stopped to help him.
My only other negative, and I know it seems like there are a lot, is that it ends quite suddenly with more than a few stories left open.
Overall, this is a hard going book morally, but an easy read and a real eye opener into the life of an unusual main character.

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