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August 15, 2004
Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Imagine
Catcher in the Rye written by Oliver Sacks and you start to get close to what Mark Haddon is doing here. Having worked with autistic children he is able to give incredible insight into the mind of his protagonist, Christopher Boone, a 15 year old with a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. Christopher is brilliant at math and science and thinks with more logic than most people but he doesn't understand human emotion and can not relate to people or deal with change in his daily schedule. Told from his point of view, it begins as a murder mystery concerning the death of his neighbor's dog but it becomes a journey of self-discovery, which for someone with autism can be quite a feat.
I thought at first that having Christopher narrate the story was going to become gimmicky. But then, I also thought the murder mystery was going to be pretty basic and it wasn't. In fact, the murder mystery is sort of a MacGuffin, just giving Christopher motivation to propel him through the story. The story goes well beyond both the murder and the gimmick of the narration.
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