The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time

Title: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Mark Haddon
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Release Date: May 18, 2004

Goodreads: 

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.

Review:

Last school year my English class read a poem everyday at the beginning of class. After reading one of the many poems,  my English teacher (we'll call her Ms. Jones) described how she felt after reading the poem. Ms. Jones said, "X poem was so powerful--after I read it, I felt as though the wind was knocked out of me. Has anyone else ever felt like this?" Of course, because the class was made up of way-too-cool teenagers, everyone looked at their fingernails, and doodled on the corner of their paper. I probably half-way raised my hand to answer Ms. Jones' question before I realized that Ms. Jones  had moved onto something else and I was stupidly sitting in my seat with my hand raised. Anyway, if Ms. Jones asked me right now if The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (CIDNT) knocked the wind out of me I would whole-heartedly throw my hand into the air with pride because CIDNT was amazing, original, and incredibly eye-opening. 

My favorite aspect of this novel was the perspective. The story was told by the main character, Christopher, an autistic boy. Christopher was especially blunt and frank (ex. pg 43, "All the other children at my school are stupid"). 

I loved the way Christopher described people he encountered. His descriptions were never: Joe was tall, and had brown hair. In the novel, he described a character, Mr. Jeavons like so (pg. 5), "... Mr. Jeavons smells of soap and wears brown shoes that have approximately 60 tiny circular holes in each of them." This description is much more interesting than the generic: Joe was tall, and had brown hair. 

Christopher mentioned this exact thing (source)

Finally, I enjoyed Christopher's intelligence. He is one of the only book characters who loves math and science. Some of the concepts that Christopher described in this novel went a little over my head, but I still enjoyed the math and science references.

I wouldn't describe the ending of this novel as happy. I would describe the ending of this novel as hopeful. All of the conflicts introduced in CIDNT weren't neatly wrapped up, but you could tell that the unresolved issues were being sorted out. 

I think the world of this novel, and appreciate the perspective. About every other page I had to share a passage with my Mom because the novel was intelligent, witty, and poignant . I recommend CIDNT to anyone looking for a unique, and intriguing novel! Holy guacamole that review was long, so thanks for reading!