The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is a brilliant work of fiction. It tells the story of a fifteen-year-old boy named Christopher who, while walking alone in his neighborhood late one night, comes across his neighbor's dog lying on the ground with a pitchfork protruding out of its side. The dog, a standard-sized French poodle named Wellington, is dead - murdered by an unknown party. Christopher, who loves animals, decides that he is going to solve the mystery of who killed Wellington, and, while he is at it, he is going to write a book about his investigation.And that set-up should be enough for this story to proceed to some sort of satisfying conclusion, but with Christopher John Francis Boone, nothing is ever simple. Christopher is autistic, and while that condition provides some advantages for detective work - such as being highly focused and extremely logical - it also complicates his life in other ways. Christopher does not like to be touched - or to function in close proximity to other people, especially people whom he does not know, and his experience in functioning outside of his school and his home - on his own - is very limited. He can also be uncomfortably direct in his statements and questions."The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is, in effect, one book with two authors. It is in reality a novel written by Mark Haddon, a talented young author, children's author, and screenwriter who at one time worked with autistic youth. But Haddon's novel is also a representation of the book that Christopher is writing about the case of the murdered dog. The entire book is written in the first-person with Christopher as the narrator.One of the things that interests Christopher Boone is math. While he is being educated in a special school for children with an assortment of handicaps - and learning to function in the world - Christopher is also absorbed with learning about nature and math. One aspect of his devotion to math is an intense interest in prime numbers. Christopher knows every prime number up to 7,057, and because of this fascination with primes, he numbers the chapters in his book by ascending prime numbers. The first chapter is 2, the second is 3, the third is 5, and so on. He also halts the narrative at various places to discuss certain math problems, and the appendix is a four-page discussion and resolution of a math problem that appeared in his A Level Math Examination.In addition to the steady flow of math references, Christopher uses his own drawings to illustrate objects, concepts, and patterns in his book.During the course of writing his book, Christopher does discover who killed Wellington, and he also unearths some family secrets that set his life in turmoil. Christopher becomes more independent as he struggles to solve the murder mystery. At one point he has to figure out how to get himself on a train and make his way to London, and then once in the big city, he has to manage to get to a particular address - all of which he eventually does.Christopher John Francis Boone is perhaps the most engaging narrator to grace the pages of a book about troubled youth since Holden Caulfield. Christopher sets a goal and achieves it, and along the way he gets a more secure handle on his life and gives the world a clearer view of what it is like to function with autism."The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is a compelling narrative that delivers on multiple levels. And while there is no standard symptomology for autism. Christopher's responses and behaviors will be recognizable to many who have had first hand experience with individuals on the autism spectrum.Mark Haddon's - and Christopher Boone's - book is a remarkable achievement, a stark and logical look at the world through the perspective of an individual with autism. It's a rare chance for many of us to see the world as we have never seen it before - and to be better people for the taking the opportunity.Yes, reading "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" can make you a better person - if you are up for the experience!

it is not a “One thousand and one nights” type of story. It is a short, and predictable story. But through the thinking of a boy with autism, simplicity can be come complicated at some points. It is satisfying as this novel has a happy ending for all. Nice to read this and kill time on a long train. BTW, the author is also very good at mathematic too.

This remarkable novel starts with the murder of an older dog and ends with the naming of a puppy. In between it achieves a lot with extremely simple means. On the surface it poses as the coming-of-age story of the autistic teenager, Christopher. In the wake of a long and distinguished tradition, coming-of-age novels are encumbered by a time-honored set of conventions, which are rigidly observed here, with the marvelous effect of complementing the rigidity of the autistic boy's behavior. As a "red herring", to use Christopher's terminology, the novel starts as a mystery story, but this pretense is dropped midway when the mystery is solved by a confession, in precisely the way the many "clues" dropped along the way led the reader to believe it would be solved. But by then deep issues of style and substance have been raised and cast in an entirely novel light.We are told that an autistic child is incapable of telling anything but the truth, even if not always the whole truth. Given that the story is told in the first person by Christopher, this has remarkable stylistic repercussions: the author is bound to foreswear the use of metaphor, though not of simile. This leads to an occasionally hilarious exploration of a literature without metaphors. Under this constraint, descriptions turn quantitative. A meadow is described by listing the numbers of cows with different hide markings, and in the interest of "truthful disclosure" we are told that the boy is observing the meadow while "weeing" during a car trip. You say "aha now I know how literature that is close to the truth, and as such much more reliable, would look like." Add to this that an autistic child is incapable of understanding human emotions, another crucial ingredient of a good novel, and you are led to say "now I know what literature devoid of any understanding of emotions would look like."And then, when you are through with this novel, you suddenly realize that all its unassailable component truths add up to one big lie. For why should a human being haunted by fears and suffering, as overwhelming as those experienced by Christopher, care about understanding the emotions of those around him? Anyway why should these creatures, subject to the whole usual gamut of human emotions, from love to jealousy, from hatred to revenge, serve as a worthwhile example to him? His pain is much deeper than theirs and in final analysis what he experiences as physical pain of all kinds (in his chest, his head, wherever) is really a gamut of emotions compared to which all the petty emotions of those around him pale. So, accepting the basic premise of this book --- that Christopher understands nothing about human emotions --- is the biggest lie of all and we are back on the territory of novels in which bored capricious women, be it in a French small town or in Russian high society, are driven to adultery, and when despair sets in, to suicide. Cristopher's despair dwarfs that of Mmes. Karenina and Bovary, but he at least has figured out how to groan or take the cubes of integers and thereby to cope and survive.Even what might be thought of at first as a weakness of this book, in the end turns out to be one of its strengths. I have in mind the rigid matter-of-fact style appropriate to Christopher's narration, which starts wearing on the reader after a while. My reaction was one of impatience, of I have seen that, can't you do something else. But then, this going on the reader's nerves is marvelously tailored to make him understand through first hand experience what living with an autistic child feels like, even if only for the short time it takes to read this novel.Rather than simply assuring us that Christopher is intelligent and scientifically talented, the author has him elegantly rendering some beautiful and well-known ideas of mathematics and physics. It is clear that this boy is headed for a life in the sciences, but will his autism stand in the way of his doing original work? Creative work, as has been realized over the years, has an important emotive component. Will Christopher be able to come up with what it takes at the emotional level? To judge by what we know about him from this story, he does have all it takes, and if there is a danger it is that he even has too much of it.Besides being a future scientist, Christopher is known to us as a writer who has us rethinking the description and understanding of emotions in literature and the meaning of truth, or at least of truth as reflected in a work of art.

And I even enjoyed the bits of math and logic. It begins as a mystery but morphs into what it’s like living inside the head of a teenage boy with autism; How he see’s the world and how he negotiates his way through living with challenges and people. At times that process and the explanations of writing about every thought which came into his head was illuminating but also a bit tedious.Ultimately it seemed to be about how we all try to get along with our foibles, those pings in life and with one another.

Mon fils de 15 ans à adoré

Highly recommend this fantastic play

Comprei para poder ler em inglês e aprender. É uma história cheia de detalhes e ajuda muito.

Spedizione veloce e prodotto OK. venditore consigliatissimo A++++

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