THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, by Mark Haddon is probably the book with the best voice that I’ve read in a long time. Voice is important in any story but particularly interesting and enticing when the story is told by an 15-year-old English boy living with Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism.
Haddon’s remarkable character Christopher John Francis Boone find a neighbor’s dog dead in the yard, he begins a search for the killer and in turn finds mystery after mystery and begins to solve them in a way that only a savant, such as Christopher, can. The story becomes less about the killer of the dog and more about Christopher.
He begins chronicling his investigations at the advice of his friend and counselor Siobhan. Inserted as randomly as the thought forms in his mind, Christopher inserts drawings, diagrams and explanations into the dialogue in his way of assisting the reader in understanding his tale.
CURIOUS is refreshing in tone, both light-hearted and serious at times. Despite having a very limited world to live in, Christopher details his universe with such detail that it actually sounds like an interesting place to reside. He despises yellow and brown, loves the color red. He does not like to be touched, to the point where even his parents hold out their hands and fingers and touch his fingertips, rather than hug. He does calculations and math in his head to calm his nerves, much like any of us would take deep breaths or attempt a meditation. He cannot tell a lie, speaking what many of us only think.
I found my reaction to CURIOUS to be similar to when I had read Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. I saw Christopher doing things, although deemed characteristic of autism, that I do, just in a different way.
Where he would do calculations, I might pray or recite poetry; where he cannot handle certain situations, I become panicked on occasion and wonder how I will complete the situation at hand.
OVERALL: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a extraordinary read. It is both honest and moving sans the sappy heart-warming mush.
