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Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Jeff Woodman ISBN: 1-4025-5598-9 Publisher: Recorded Books Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 4 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.54 (247 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant and absorbing
Comment: It's been years since I've read through a novel in essentially one sitting. That's how absorbing this one is. I heard excerpts from the novel read on BBC Radio before I read the book and I was sold. The novel is amazing, not just because of the convincing way the author assumes the voice of the protagonist, a 15-year-old autistic from Swindon named Christopher, but because of the humanity he endows all of the characters with, from the seriously troubled father to the multitude of confused and harried police officers that Christopher interacts with. Like others here, I was also struck and mesmerized by the excursions into other parts of Christopher's mind, particularly the parts that are genius at math and science. This novel is much more than the sum of its parts. It can be read as (not limited to but including) a detective story, a Bildungsroman, a tale of family conflict, and a meditation on memory, socialization, and information, all in one. The tone is never one of bathos -- you feel Christopher's pain and confusion, and you are caught up in his plight, but you never feel manipulated to pity him. Absolutely brilliant.
Rating: 5
Summary: Original and insightful
Comment: Absolutely one of the most unusual and original novels ever to come out, "The Curious Incident" is an enlightening look at autism through the eyes of the main character. When a neighbor's poodle is discovered impaled on a pitchfork, it becomes fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone "job" to figure out what happened. The use of a child narrator voice, along with the handicap, reminded me of Jackson McCrae's "Bark of the Dogwood,"--another book dealing with gifted but handicapped children. And the simplicity of the tale was reminiscent of "Life of Pi." But that aside, it really has its own merits and is like nothing else that I know of. Very, very unusual and original. A highly recommended tale through the eyes of an autistic teenager, "The Curious Incident" will give you a glimpse into the "other side."
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Novel: Here's Why
Comment: Christopher is a fifteen-year-old, mildly autistic boy who lives with his father in Swindon, a small town about a hundred miles outside London. His mother has passed away several years ago of cancer, so it's just Christopher and his father. During the days, Christopher attends a "special needs" school, where lessons include not only the three R's, but also tips on dealing with strangers and decoding facial expressions (Christopher can recognize happy and sad faces, but more complicated faces give him trouble). For a project, Christopher's teacher tells him to write a book about himself. Adding his own individual touches along the way (a math prodigy, the boy numbers his chapters not 1, 2, 3, but as prime numbers in ascending order), and peppering the text with illustrative tables and drawings, Christopher embarks on a detective story about Mrs. Shears's dog, stabbed to death in her yard with a garden fork.
Christopher's purpose in writing his book is to emulate his hero, Sherlock Holmes (whose logical mind he greatly admires), and solve the case. But his investigations unearth more about the relationships between his family and his neighbors than about the identity of the dog's killer. Unable to decode sarcasm, jokes, or figures of speech (he calls them all "lies," since they aren't the truth), Christopher faithfully notes down his conversations and observations; though the reader, able to read between the lines, will guess the truth fairly quickly, Christopher's inability to understand social cues makes his struggle for answers all the more affecting.
Constantly bewildered by the (to him) incomprehensible behavior of those around him, Christopher resembles nothing so much as a human plunked down on a distant planet, trying desperately to figure out how to interpret the language and behavior of an alien species. And, in a way, many of Christopher's conclusions and actions make logical sense; but because he lacks a normal person's ability to make intuitive connections or understand the unspoken, Christopher has to rely on the imperfect set of rules he's learned about human behavior. Which is not to say Christopher can't also be infuriating, with his startling rigidity and resistance to change; he's prone to loss of bladder control and groaning fits when confused or scared by his surroundings - which is rather often. Nevertheless, he's deeply sympathetic and intensely believable, even if (like me) you've never met an autistic person before.
Other characters, such as Christopher's father and bereaved dog-owner Mrs. Shears, are realistically flawed and very convincing. They're not saints, by any means; Christopher's father tries hard to be patient, but can't control his frustration and anger, and all too often takes it out on his unresisting son. Mrs. Shears, for her part, is icily distant to Christopher. At first we assume that it's because of his insensitive poking into the death of her pet, but as the story progresses, we learn that her hostility stems from other, understandable (though not very noble) reasons. Obviously, Christopher's not responsible for his condition, and obviously he wouldn't have chosen to be as he is; but even though he can't help it, the boy is a heavy burden to those who must care for him, and frequent flare-ups of resentment and bitterness keep the story well away from saccharine TV-movie territory.
Haddon is a subtle and sensitive writer, leaving it to us to draw the conclusions that Christopher can't. His precise and careful prose reveal just enough to keep us a step ahead of Christopher - and give us an ominous sense of dark revelations waiting in the wings - while retaining a suspenseful mood throughout the narrative. In the end, though, the only mystery here is one that's beyond Christopher's, or anyone's, power to solve: how people can be so brutal, violent, and cruel to each other in the name of love. Along with this great novel, I'd like to recommend another Amazon quick-pick curiosity -------------------------> The Losers Club by Richard Perez
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Title: The Time Traveler's Wife (Today Show Book Club #15) by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1931561648 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0156027321 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Middlesex : A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN: 0312422156 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd ISBN: 0142001740 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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