The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Book Review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

by Mark Haddon

Published in 2003

The story opens with the discovery of a neighbour's dead dog by the narrator, Christopher. He is 15 but thinks like a child and soon the reader would learn that he is 'special' (the reviews have termed autistic). Christopher decides to solve the mystery of the murder and writes a book, recording his detection, description of the suspects and his own thought process. Interestingly, his book is actually the novel.

Christopher seems extremely logical, he sees things as they are, without biases and definitely without emotions. He digresses into interesting facts like multiplying 251 by 864 (which reminded me of CAT quants) and logically explains things like God and evolution and the universe. Those snippets reminded me of certain friends I have who would love to discuss such logic. Some facts were new to me, like Croyden's Soldiers and "spiraling" to find a new place when one has reached the vicinity. These are all explained with illustrations.

Solving a murder mystery would have been simple for such a brilliant kid, except that he is completely unable to sense human emotions. He can't sympathise with other people. He asks his neighbour to go away because she is a 'neither family nor friend' and threatens helping strangers with his Swiss Army Knife, because they're strangers. He himself doesn't feel anything when scolded by people. And yet he loves his pet rat Toby, who he explains is clean and doesn't carry Bubonic Plague, and even risks his own life to save his rat.

As the detection progresses, he stumbles into a secret about his dead mother. The truth would have affected a normal human badly but Christopher is shielded by his inability to understand humans or feel emotions. The only time he felt pain was when he was told he couldn't sit his A-level maths exam.

One almost tends to start disliking Christopher for being so insensitive and so self-centered. And yet again I found myself being indifferent to his pain when he was told about his maths exam. I felt as if he deserved it. I felt sympathy for strangers who tried to help him, characters who existed only in single sentences.

The plot is intriguing, there's not much of a mystery, its not even important. What holds on is the description of what goes inside Christopher's head, how he sees the world around him, how he misses what people see and sees what people miss. The illustrated bits of trivia also act as fillers and help sustain the readers' interest. Even then, Haddon slips at certain points, the descriptions get weak and unconvincing at times. It should be noted that the story is not an accurate description of how autistic children think and behave, in fact nowhere in the story has Haddon mentioned the word Autism. But overall, the book is readable, funny and interesting.

The story ends with an appendix explaining the answer to a question from the A-level maths exam. But what left me perplexed was the fact that how we and people like Christopher stand at opposite ends of logic and sensitivity, and how difficult it becomes to understand each other.

I commend all the parents and teachers of people with special needs, for their immense love and patience for these kids.