Book Review

http://reeyah.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/the_curious_incident.jpg


I find the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time very creative and well-written. The author, Mark Haddon, keeps the reader in suspense throughout the story and teaches the reader about autism and savant syndrome through a fictional boy’s life. Christopher Boone, the main character in the novel, is an autistic 15-year old boy who has unbelievable talent in mathematics. The novel begins with Christopher finding his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork while Christopher was taking a walk late at night. Christopher decides he will become a detective just like his idol Sherlock Holmes to figure out who killed Wellington. Wellington’s owner, Mrs. Shears, refuses to give Christopher information about the matter and Christopher’s father demands him to stop investigating. As the story continues, another mystery involving Christopher’s mother is unraveling. Christopher’s father told him his mother had died, and Christopher learns surprising information about his mother during his investigation of Wellington’s murderer.

The novel is unconventional in comparison to other books I have read recently. The main character, Christopher, is writing the story about important events happening in the book. The entire story is in first person, while all the other books I have read have been in third person. In the story, Christopher has many superstitions. One of them is if he sees 5 red cars in a row it makes the day a Super Good Day, and if he sees 4 yellow cars in a row it makes the day a black day where Christopher sits in a corner reading all day. Also, Christopher does not like to go out in public to places he has never been before. In the story, Christopher goes to the train station on his own, but he had never been there before. When he gets there, he zones out and does a math problem called Conway’s Soldiers for two and a half hours. Since Christopher is autistic, the events in the story don’t happen the way they would with a main character without autism.

The plot of the story is put together adequately by the author. The novel begins with a conflict, and all the main characters are introduced. Throughout the story, all the events lead up to a climax at the end where most of the reader’s questions are answered as well as the conflict. The author keeps the reader into the book because so much is happening. Each chapter contains a new smaller story inside the novel itself. The reader never knows what is going to happen next since the story is written about Christopher’s life. Mark Haddon describes the characters very well when they are introduced, so the reader gets a full description of who they are. The author includes many different characters to bring out the full plot of the story. Mark Haddon did a good job getting his message across to the reader throughout the novel. The reader can get a good idea of autism and savant syndrome since the whole story is based on an autistic boy who has an extremely logical brain.

In my opinion, I give the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time two thumbs up. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to know how an autistic person lives their life and how they act in real life situations.