Rec: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

by Mark Haddon



Buy: @ Powell's Books

Read if you like: Sherlock Holmes, young narrators, The Lovely Bones, detective quests, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Secret Life of Bees, seeing 5 red cars in a row.



Why should you read this?

I'm willing to bet that this is one of those books you've heard about but never got around to picking up. One of those books they put on the front table at B&N (I just learned that publishers pay to put the books on the tables and ends of the shelves, they aren't picked because they are good or the staff likes them! I feel conned.) and you say, "why, that looks interesting, what a silly name" and then you walk off to grab the Return of the King dvd or whatever was out in '04. I am telling you to go back and grab it off the shelf.

The 'hook' of the novel is the narrator, Christopher Boone: a nerdy fifteen year-old living with his dad. Christopher also happens to have what we assume is Asperger's. Christopher has very limited social abilities and struggles with understanding facial expressions and other societal conventions. At the same time he has savant-like capabilities for math and science and lives his within very strict rules (for example, he refuses to eat yellow foods). Since we are reading the novel Christopher is writing for us we experience the world like he does with all the digressions and diagrams that pepper his thoughts.

We accompany Christopher as he attempts to solve a mystery like his hero, Sherlock Holmes. His search for the murderer of the neighbor's dead poodle, Wellington, is alternated with chapters detailing the writing process and conversations Christopher has with his aid, Siobhan. Chapter numbers are all prime numbers (He can calculate the primes up to 2179. I use my fingers to calculate 8+7).

The interactions between Christopher and 'normal' people provide a lot of humor as Christopher tries to navigate the complicated world we take for granted. You can't help but root for him as he grows up page by page. As implausible as it seems, maybe Christopher can overcome the odds.


Excerpt of the awesome:

Mr Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order and I said it did.
Then he asked if I didn't like things changing. And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.
He asked me whether I wanted to become an astronaut and I said I did.