Dog In The Nighttime

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon is a great book, and an interesting look into autism and what it’s like to deal with it. This book, written in 2003, is an adult fiction/mystery book about a boy name Christopher Boone. He lives in Swindon with his father, and is very interested in facts and numbers. He knows "all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,507". Although he knows all this, he has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. When Chris finds his neighbors dog dead on their lawn, he turns into a amateur detective and has to find out who killed the dog. This becomes challenging for him, as he can juggle details and facts, but can’t handle emotions well, and doesnt know how to prioritize.

The story is from the perspective of Chris, as if he wrote the book. As a result, the writing in this book is very odd, considering he has autism. I find the way its written kind of confusing. It has many, many chapters, 223 to be exact, but each chapter usually a page long. It’s also in chronological order, as everything written in the book is exactly in the order of events that it happened, which is the logical way to write in Chris’s mind. This is probably my biggest negative about the book. The book cover itself is also very interesting, as it’s very minimalistic and shows a silhouette of an upside-down dog. The story is very riveting as well. While Chris has a mystery on his hands, he also goes through issues with his father, and learns a lot of dark secrets about his family and his neighbors. Although the book contains quite dark material, it handles it in a childlike, charming, and sort of funny way, just as Chris had. There isn’t much of a strong moral to the story, but a lesson can be learned about autism and how kids deal with it through Chris’s