The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

Recently, I just read another fantastic book that that gave me the "I mustn't read too fast or it will be over too soon" feeling. The title of the book is 'The curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' by Mark Haddon. I thought that he is very clever with how the plot progressed and how he joined all the fragments of seemingly unrelated pages together. He is able to narrate a story that differs entirely from his own world.

Spoiler Warning....

The story is about a teenager, Christopher, age 15. Christopher is unlike any teenager his age. He is really different. He lives in a world of his own and detest any human contact. Christopher excels in Mathematic, has a photographic memory, love Sherlock Holmes but hate the author and live by his own sets of rules.

He is autistic.

Autistism is a paradoxical word itself. Could it be said that the person is cursed with a gift or gifted with a curse.

Either way.

The person could be the smartest person in his entire school but is not able to commute to school on his own. Or he could solve challenging mathematical equation but not able to understand metaphorphical statements like 'an apple of his eye' or 'I laugh my socks off' . He gets confuse because he cannot imagine how this is so.

He is able to understand and explain the Monty Hall Problem (very interesting, go find out!) which I find it rather difficult to understand mainly because I am someone guided by intuition and not math.

The plot of the story is actually how he tried to be a detective (like his favourite Sherlock Holmes) to investigate who killed his neighbour dog. (Decided not to spoil the story by revealing the ending and this is not a lie because previously I wrote 'Spoiler Warning' and this is just a clarification) Pg177

In the entire book, not once was the term 'autistic' mentioned. I believe that the author is trying to mimick reality where it is a taboo word which no one speak off audibly.

Everyone should really pick up this book off the shelves (if you are lucky enough to find it since it is the winner of the whitebread book of the year) and read it. You will surely gain great insights into their enclosed world as well as other pieces of information that the author includes.

3 cheers to Mark Haddon.




Credits to Mark Haddon who inspired this entry.