The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - No Touching!

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Author: Mark Haddon

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them. –Narrator

...the only thing I could think was how much it hurt because there was no room for anything else in my head, but I couldn't go to sleep and I just had to sit there and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt. –Narrator

Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet. –Narrator

I see everything. –Narrator

Amazon.com describes this book as such:

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.

This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

This short 117-page book is written from the point of view of an autistic child on a mission to find out who killed his neighbor’s dog. Initially blamed for the crime, Christopher sets out to unravel the mystery not only to clear his name but also because he likes to know how and why things happen.

Christopher’s world is complicated in its simplicity. He doesn’t like things that are brown or yellow; he bases the day’s mood on the cars he sees on the way to school; and he does not like to be touched. He understands animals more than people and has a hard time deciphering facial expressions.

When you read a book that is told from a first-person view, it only works if the reader trusts the narrator. If the reader’s relationship with the narrator isn’t based on trust, the reader doesn’t connect with the narrator and instead questions everything he says. As a reader, you are being blindly led down a path by your narrator, trusting that he will show you what you need to see, when you need to see it. You’re trusting that he will not lie to you or let you get hurt unless he is also hurt.

While we tend to instinctively trust children, it is sometimes less automatic to trust those people deemed developmentally challenged. Christopher starts the book by telling us about his discovery of the dead dog. It is in the second chapter (chapter 3 – Christopher “decided to give [his] chapters prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, and so on because [he] like[s] prime numbers.”), he formerly introduces himself to his readers.

He also introduces the reader to his teacher, Siobhan, who is the one to suggest he write a book in the first place. As the simple mystery of the dog’s murder leads Christopher to uncover a second mystery in which his home life takes an unexpected turn, Siobhan and his school seem the one constant. Even when he runs away from home in search of the mystery’s end, it is the thought of going to school to take his exams that sits at the front of his mind.

I will never be autistic. The things I observe and react to are different than the things Christopher does. He takes his reader on a journey to London, braving a busy street and a crowded train station, trying desperately to stay focused despite his hyper-sensitivity to all things audible and visible. It was hard for me, as the reader, to watch him suffer through his several near-breakdowns; but it was oddly inspiring to see him think it out, groan it out and wait it out, eventually reaching his destination, a seemingly impossible feat.

By the end of the book, all I wanted to do was hug him – or rather, hold out my right hand and spread my fingers out in a fan, the sign of love used by Christopher and his family – for everything he’d gone through and for the bravery in which he endured it all. I wasn't ready for the book to end when it did. But once he’d solved both his original mystery and the new one that arose along the way, Christopher had no more reason to write.

I really wanted to include the last sentence of the book as a quote in this post but I couldn't bring myself to do it. This is a book that deserves to be read and each reader deserves to reach the last sentence and enjoy each word’s import on his own.

My takeaway: sometimes it’s the child who teaches the parent and the developmentally challenged who teaches the “normal.” And 3 red cars in a row make it a Quite Good Day while 4 yellow cars in a row make it a Black Day.