The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Sunday, September 28, 2014The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
I read this some years ago when I was still in secondary school and I remember loving it. When I saw it on sale during my last visit to a local boot fair, I bought it without hesitation. It only cost me 20p. I like to reread good books, especially when I read it in Lithuanian originally. It's different experience when you read it in English.
It's about Christopher, a fifteen-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism and a talent for maths, who writes a book, this book, about his investigations of the murder of a neighbour's dog. He loves Sherlock Holmes and is amazingly observant of tiny details, but his lack of insight into other people's emotional lives hampers his investigation.
It's about Christopher, a fifteen-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism and a talent for maths, who writes a book, this book, about his investigations of the murder of a neighbour's dog. He loves Sherlock Holmes and is amazingly observant of tiny details, but his lack of insight into other people's emotional lives hampers his investigation.
I enjoyed Christopher's observations about life and the way in which he sees it. It can be funny, particularly when Christopher misunderstands situations. Despite his very different thinking and view of the world, I found it easy to relate to him.
“I said that I wasn’t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder. Or if you see someone’s name and you give each letter a value from 1 to 26 (a = 1, b =2, etc.) and you add the numbers up in your head and you find that it makes a prime number, like Jesus Christ (151), or Scooby-Doo (113), or Sherlock Holmes (163), or Doctor Watson (167).
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