For my independent reading project, I chose the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime written by Mark Haddon. It was published in May of 2003 by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Doubleday here in the States. It is first and foremost a mystery novel; but at its core the book is about how a differently abled teenage boy copes with change in his world. It is a book that I have wanted to read for several years now but had never gotten around to it thanks to this class I have finally been able to and despite of a few flaws I enjoyed the book.
The book is about a teenage boy named Christopher. While the author never formally diagnoses Christopher with anything it is obvious to the reader that he is on the Autism Spectrum. One-night Christopher sees a dog laying in his neighbor’s yard. Upon closer inspection the dog has been killed with a pitchfork. Christopher, a fan of mystery novels decides that he is going to figure out who killed the dog. He spends the rest of the novel unraveling the mysteries at the heart of the dogs’ death. I will not go into details, but I will day that there are two very large plot twists that change the book entirely.
While the book is about a child who probably is autistic
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I absolutely hate Christopher. He is one of my least favorite characters ever. He feels entirely cold and indifferent to anything that does not interest him. It’s hard to explain but I would almost say its as if the story is being told in a monotone voice in a black and white world. Christopher lives in a very black or white world and that structure is very off putting most of the time. I felt bad having such terrible things to say about a character with developmental disorder but after reading how people with Asperger’s felt about the character I feel better. As one reader wrote, if he has Asperger’s it is the most extreme case ever recorded. It feels as if he has all the worst qualities of someone with the