Book Review - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My teenage years were spent hearing about this book. Everyone was intrigued by it because of its title - unusual is definitely the word for it. What I didn't know at the time was the content.

This novel from 2003 is about a young boy with Asperger's Syndrome, a condition considered to be on the autism spectrum. Christopher is a gifted child whose life seems to be thrown asunder when his neighbour's dog dies. As a highly logical and astute youngster, he does the only reasonable thing - follows the path of his favourite detective (Sherlock Holmes) and starts investigating the death of the dog. The entire book is written from Christopher's point of view and it does a thorough job of making a literal mind understandable to the reader.

While the book is a hilarious and emotional journey that could very well take place anywhere in the world, it does have some major flaws. It is impractical to believe that Christopher would have made it unscathed all the way in an unknown city. His mental being would not have helped him in such chaos.

[SPOILER ALERT] However, the one thing that really bothered me about the book was the denouement. First we find out that Christopher's dead mother isn't dead - because, of course. Then, once Christopher finds her, the author falls into a terrible writing trap - writing the mother's new partner as some heartless beast who doesn't want Christopher around. He's written so poorly that one wonders why the mother even bothered to shack up with this guy. And that's just a sign of poor writing.

Add to this, when Christopher's mother decides to become his guardian again, she doesn't do so in good ol' London town; she goes back to their old dead-end home town, where she has no prospects and no future. She's painted as someone so guilt-ridden because of abandoning her son, that she has no faculties remaining. Her life becomes dedicated to caring for the boy, while his father prances off to greener pastures. It is abrupt and, again, impractical. It sounds harsh, but when you're reading the book, it's an about-turn that makes absolutely no sense. [END SPOILER]

The endearing aspect of the book is down to its writing style, its novel protagonist (still so, more than a decade after the book was published) and the winning combination of action-adventure, hilarity and pathos.

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