THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME
By Mark Haddon
Christopher John Francis Boone is an alien: an autistic fifteen-year-old
mathematics genius unable to interact with others or understand human emotions.
He finds people confusing and doesn’t like coming into contact with them. He
is also unable to tell a lie, or make use of a metaphor (metaphors, in his
thinking, are a kind of lie).
This makes him an odd narrator for a novel. Of course Christopher doesn’t
like "proper" novels. They are "lies about things which didn’t
happen." He does like mystery novels though, and so he calls his
composition a "murder mystery novel" (why he would consider it a
novel, which is a fiction, instead of a memoir, isn’t clear).
Christopher’s literal-mindedness isn’t bulletproof. In addition to
mystery novels he also likes watching Star Trek. He uses hypothetical
figures, a form of make-believe, to illustrate a scientific problem. He
considers a scheme for classifying days as good or bad based on the number of
cars going by of the same colour as being perfectly logical. In other words he
is not a human calculator, but a withdrawn, observant kid with a mathematical
imagination. He prefers the order of mathematical systems to human chaos, but is
quirky enough to number his chapters using only prime numbers because he likes
them better.
The mystery begins with the killing of a neighbor’s poodle. Determined to
discover who stuck a garden pitchfork into poor Wellington, Christopher begins
his investigation in the spirit of his hero Sherlock Holmes, "detaching his
mind at will" from anything not relating to the problem to be solved.
But, this being life and not a mystery novel, everything is related to the
problem. And it is precisely Christopher’s detachment from the human messiness
and emotional turmoil that surrounds the curious incident that makes him such an
effective narrator (albeit a hit-and-miss detective). Author Mark Haddon plays
on the reader’s sympathies a little much, making it impossible not to root for
the plucky (but occasionally, and realistically, obnoxious) tyke surrounded by
nasty people who just don’t understand, but the novel as a whole is a
remarkably skilled performance.
One question many readers will have is whether Haddon, who has worked with
autistic children, has created a "real" autistic child in Christopher
Boone. Since autism is a disorder characterized by introversion and an inability
to communicate with others, the inner world of those afflicted has always been a
mystery. Given that Christopher is perfectly capable of carrying on a
conversation, not to mention his writing a book, he seems only slightly
affected. He is extremely intelligent. His inability to understand emotions, or
to have feelings beyond anger and confusion, seem to be more the result of a
lack of interest in these things than a psychological barrier. Unfortunately, in
making Christopher more like an average boy experiencing minor technical
difficulties that are mainly the result of the misunderstanding of strangers
than someone with a serious disorder, Haddon makes his exasperating
self-absorption seem almost willful.
Of course any first-person consciousness in a novel is pure invention, and
whether Christopher is believable as an autistic child is probably beside the
point. As a narrator with a psychological disorder he invites but finally
frustrates diagnosis. But the book itself works like a charm. The eventful
narrative has two tested engines, being a mystery story that gives way to an
autistic Odyssey. As in a lot of adult books with child narrators, a gentle
satire arises from the conflict between Christopher’s innocent personality and
the insane normal world of grown-ups. The result is a cleverly constructed tale
full of odd and charming moments.
Notes:
Review first published August 16, 2003. The promotional flyer that came with
the review copy of this book began by pointing out that it was receiving a lot
of "Hollywood buzz" and that Brad Pitt had even taken an interest.
This is the sort of thing publishers expect reviewers to respect and take very seriously.
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