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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Book Review
Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Mark Haddon
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: July 31, 2003
Pages: 226
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.
My Thoughts
The book opens with Christopher John Francis Boone in his neighbor's front yard. There, he finds the neighbor's dog dead with a pitchfork stuck through it, Unable to move away, the police assume he's the one that murdered the dog and take him away to the station where his dad has to get him out.
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.
Christopher decides to try and solve the murder of the dog, hence the title of the book, but this all soon takes a turn. We later learn that his mother died a while back and it's now just Christopher and his father. But when he discovers some things kept from him, everything changes. It no longer becomes a murder mystery of his neighbor's dog but so much more.
I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ (4)
Christopher's relationships with people around him are unique. The special "handshake" he shares with his father is wholesome but also Christopher somewhat finds support in Siobhan, his school counselor.
As one of the debates I had in class, it was over which parent was better. Both of them are flawed and it really portrayed Christopher's parents as human. But my conclusion is this: I think their relationship with Christopher is different so it wasn't really comparable as to which one was better.
Overall, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was a pretty interesting read as I always read ahead of my class. I appreciated how human the characters seemed and how Christopher tried to make sense of those around him.
Mark Haddon is the author of the bestselling novels The Red House and A Spot of Bother. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award–winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.
Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon is the author of the bestselling novels The Red House and A Spot of Bother. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award–winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.
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