Mark Haddon, The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

In the magic world of literature it is not difficult to find stories with different points of view, but these stories are typical of the fantasy genre. However, Mark Haddon, with his Christopher Boon, gives us the unusual point of view of an autistic child who sees, acts, and lives in our own world, but he does it in a completely different way.

Though Mark Haddon is a book writer for children this book turned up on the best-seller lists, and it won a number of literary awards.

The book is made up of many short chapters that are numbered with primes, because, as Christopher said “I like prime numbers […] they are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules”. But even if the chapters are short, the book can take long to be read, due to the numerous digressions, and the various descriptions, that are usually only lists of details. Anyway, the book is interesting thanks to the narrator’s innovative perspective and the focus on math. Christopher leads us into a world that appears alien to us, a world where lies are not admitted and people can only act according to logic. In the book are included various images, some are interesting but others slow down the reading.

The book talks about (and, thanks to his teacher’s hint, is written by) Christopher Boon, a boy different from all the other teenagers of his age: he hates yellow and brown, but he loves red: he is a prodigy in chess, logics and maths, but he cannot understand metaphors or sarcasm and has serious difficulties in human relations, until Wellington, his neighbour’s dog, gets killed and he does not hesitate and starts the investigation, like his hero Sherlock Holmes. Passing through the “homicide” upcoming exams in mathematics for the college and the mystery of his mother’s death.

The narrator is not unreliable, but certainly he must be interpreted because autism gives him (and us) an interesting point of view on our world, as we have already said.

The book maybe is not such an easy-reading but its reading is certainly interesting, and the people who buy this book will not remain unmet.

Domestici, Balosetti, Zanni, Bonomelli, Franzoni, Bettoni classe 4^C liceo Scientifico