Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book. I really though I was going to. I'd read several good reviews and had a couple people recommend it.

The book is unique in that the main character and narrator, Christopher, is Autistic thus giving us a look at what it might be like to view the world through his eyes and mind. Christopher can't be touched, he loves animals but has trouble relating to people, and is gifted in memorization and mathematics. I enjoyed the main characters humor, his self awareness as he's writing the book (he often says things like my friend said not to put this in but I"m going to anyway), and the fact that each chapter is counted by only prime numbers.

However, even with the neat things this book has going for it, they weren't enough to redeem the fact that there isn't much of a plot happening. The book felt a lot longer than it was and ending is pretty anticlimactic. The only real peak in the story happens about half way through and then you're left with 80 more pages to describe one trip on a train.

It also felt like in a few places that this book was written with the sole purpose of trying to win awards...which it did. I also pretty much hated all the other characters other than Christopher and Siobhan. All the adults were angry and self absorbed. Every stranger he met says the f word every other word. Other than Christopher every other character was basically the same character, not fleshed out at all. Maybe that is supposed to be because Christopher has a hard time reading people or connecting emotionally? Or maybe it's just lazy writing on the part of the author.

I also think a lot of people read this book and felt like maybe they had learned more about autism when really this is a fiction book written by someone with very little interaction with or knowledge on the subject. The author in interviews and on his blog has even talked about the fact that he's been asked to speak about it several times and has to decline because he didn't really research it that much and isn't an expert. While this voice may ring true for some people with autism, it's important to remember that within the autistic population each person is unique (as are we all) and that this isn't representative of how they all see and interact with the world.

Save yourself some time and skip this one. There are better books out there!

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