Product Description

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Released on: 2004-03-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
The title The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (or the curious incident of the dog in the night-time as it appears within the book) is an appropriate one for Mark Haddon's ingenious novel both because of its reference to that most obsessive and fact-obsessed of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, and because its lower-case letters indicate something important about its narrator.

Christopher is an intelligent youth who lives in the functional hinterland of autism--every day is an investigation for him because of all the aspects of human life that he does not quite get. When the dog next door is killed with a garden fork, Christopher becomes quietly persistent in his desire to find out what has happened and tugs away at the world around him until a lot of secrets unravel messily.

Haddon makes an intelligent stab at how it feels to, for example, not know how to read the faces of the people around you, to be perpetually spooked by certain colours and certain levels of noise, to hate being touched to the point of violent reaction. Life is difficult for the difficult and prickly Christopher in ways that he only partly understands; this avoids most of the obvious pitfalls of novels about disability because it demands that we respect--perhaps admire--him rather than pity him. --Roz Kaveney

Daily Telegraph
'A beautifully written book...Warm and often funny'

Time Out
'Remarkable...Impressive...Rewarding'

Customer Reviews

A touching novel
I know this book has garnered a large and varied response, ranging from disdain for its unconventional structure and use of vulgar words to an admiration for how it views real life from a detached point of view. However, I found that I rather liked this book, and found it a genuinely touching book.

I won't dwell into how Haddon constructs the story, but Haddon's story is thought-provoking and touching at the same time. Haddon's plot questions the disdain we have towards people who are not of our thinking, and his drawing of the characters is so real that you feel as if you could reach out to touch them. I am struck by the way that Haddon draws the character of Christopher, because in some ways he shares many of our frustrations but yet he is still a loveable character. His untangling of the vicissitudes of everyday people is what propels the story forward. I know the plot may not be the best in how it moves abruptly to the investigation of the murder of a dog to the conflict between his parents. However, once you find that the parental disagreement is the heart of the novel and the dog incident is the key to it, the plot begins to make sense.

I know some people have raised concerns about the vulgarities peppered throughout the book. As such I see that it isn't suitable for children. I'm aware that such words, especially the F-word, are offensive but even so the expletives aren't the essence of the book and don't detract from Christopher's dealings with his predicaments.

In short, I heartily recommend this book to all, as one of the most interesting, and accessible, novels of recent years.

A few weeks in the life of Christopher Boone
This can be quite a hard book to read, documenting several weeks of the life of Aspergers sufferer Christopher Boone. Caught up in the aftermath of his parent's bitter marriage break-up, Christopher goes against his father's wishes to investigate the violent death of a near neighbour's dog. However, his emulation of his fictional hero, Sherlock Holmes, leads him to discover things about his parents that he certainly had not bargained for and the ramifications for his broken family are huge.

Narrated by Christopher himself, the book starts of in a fairly light-hearted way and some of his habits and thoughts such as his irrational dislike of the colour yellow and France are actually quite funny. However, when his normally very patient father is driven to breaking point by Christopher's actions and strikes him, the whole tone is changed and it becomes a painful, but poignant read.

Whilst it would be difficult to truly get in the head of an AS sufferer, Haddon does a good job (in my opinion, writing as someone with an autistic nephew) and makes this book work to a point. It could be accused of being (Rain Man) clichéd with Christopher's infinite powers of observation and almost genius level of maths, but he does not dilute the downside to his condition either. Frequent violent and noisy outbursts are on show, as well as Christopher's penchant for hiding in small, quiet spaces. What started of as charming and eccentric mannerisms soon become irritating and you sympathise greatly with Christopher and more so with his parents. A lot of Christoper's musings on science and maths seem to be "copy and paste" padding though, that add little to the rather Spartan story as a whole.

Overall, I can't highly recommend this book. Someone with a special needs child or who works in that area could gain from this in a "thank God it's not only me" kind of way but personally, I found this a just about ok read.

Charming, different and easy to read
I love this book. It is different from anything else I've read. Easy to read, engaging and charming. An almost perfect book.
Even if you don't normally like reading books it is worth giving this a go.
"A Spot Of Bother" was a bit of a disappointment after this.