Books and
Cooks West
December 2004
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by
Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
Dawn and Jared's place
Saturday, December 11 at 5:30 PM
Our rating: 4.6 cups of tea!
From Amazon.com
Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told
by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher
John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless,
raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with
their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at
face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his
elders and peers.
Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle,
Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him
cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending
a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his
father and neighbors--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He
is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a
book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated,
with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book
that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental,
or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers
with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time
novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is
original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. --Jack
Illingworth
