The curious incident of the dog in the night-time - by Mark Haddon
Posted on January 2nd, 2015
Beautiful book. The story of a piece of the narrator, Christopher, life starting the day he his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, is killed. Christopher is a 15 year old autistic boy living in Swindon, UK. He loves puzzles and decides to investigate the murder of Wellington and writes the book to tell the story of the investigation upon suggestion by one of his teachers, Siobhan, which seems to be the only person that truly always understands and can communicate with him. We follow Christopher’s story in chapters numbered after prime numbers as he feel fit to describe. It captivates us in a journey that digresses to the past, to the way Christopher thinks, to his interactions with the world and desires.
The book is very quick to read (took me roughly 6 or 7 hours to go through all of it) and hooks you up to understand and live Christopher’s life. Although critiques say the book is both fun and sad, I felt very little of those through the book and was only captured in the fascinating mind of this young super good at math boy. There is some sadness in the end as Christopher goes through very challenging times of his life but, in a simplistic way, hope is always present and the reader can never sense a despair and hopelessness from Christopher.
I strongly recommend it as a book to read and rethink life, interactions with human beings and how our mind deals with the world. Not a cheering up but not a depressing book either. A beautiful story with as much reality as you can get in an autistic point of view.