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| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Haddon
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $1.65
You Save: $12.30 (88%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (1434 reviews)
Sales Rank: 219
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 1400032717
EAN: 9781400032716
ASIN: 1400032717
Publication Date: May 18, 2004
Release Date: May 18, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
Amazon.com
Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbors--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. --Jack Illingworth, Amazon.ca
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1429 more reviews...
 Well below expectations. August 23, 2008
I bought this book after reading all of the massive amounts of praise that has been lavished upon it. I have to say, these praises are not deserved and I am completely baffled how this novel achieved such a status. I found myself struggling to keep reading because I knew this book was going nowhere.
First it starts with a halfway entertaining plot about the dog being killed. "Ok. Fine," I'm thinking. "Surely this will lead to something else." And it does, but it was a very frustrating read because of all the tangents the boy takes to tell about all of these completely pointless things. I understand the kid is autistic, and maybe that's how they really think. I don't know. But I do know that if that is how they think, it doesn't make for a very good book. I found myself just kind of scanning through whole chapters because I knew they had nothing to do with the plot at all and really didn't teach anyone anything unless you didn't complete middle school.
"But wait!" Some may say. "This book provides insight into how autistic kids think." Ok fine, maybe it does. But like I said, that doesn't make it a good book. I think people just like this book because it's considered "eccentric" and "different" and they like it for the same reason people like "Juno" and movies like that...they're just not as good as people make them out to be.
Bigger than just a story about autism August 22, 2008
The Boston Globe called this book, "gloriously eccentric..." which is an inaccurate way to represent this story by Mark Haddon. If anything, Haddon enters the world of autism and demystifies it, making it less eccentric. We see the world through the eyes of fifteen year-old Christopher Boone, who abhors the color yellow, but calms himself by solving complicated math problems in his head. The reader learns to re-calibrate his or her own emotional responses a la Christopher, for whom things hurt according to their logical content or lack thereof.
This book has many strengths, and Christopher's father is perhaps one of the best examples of a sympathetic but highly flawed character. While Christopher is undoubtedly the book's protagonist, the non-autistic reader will more likely empathize with Christopher's father, who is capable of both great love and great destruction.
Aside from Christopher's discussions with his therapist Siobhan, the book wisely veers away from preachy explanations about autism. Even the therapy sessions are more about interpersonal connection than outlining the intricacies of autism, and it is this that helps the reader to connect to Christopher in something other than sympathy. We engage with Christopher's world, not the world of autism...and this is right as autism spectrum disorders defy generalizations or easy categories.
The end result, if anything, is that the eccentricity of general humanity is exposed. We become conscious of our everyday lack of logic. The novel is just as much about the human condition as the autistic condition.
 What a great read August 21, 2008
This was an absolutely wonderful journey with an inspired and inspiring hero. This is simply a must read.
Full of Surprises! An Unexpected & Intelligent read! August 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Full of Surprises! This book is set in the UK and the "F-word" is used a lot. This was a very intelligent, unexpected read that really makes you use your head! Here are some of my favorite passages that I'd like to share from the Curious Incident which will give you a taste of what the book is like without giving away the storyline (page numbers may be different from your edition, but at least they'll serve as a general guide to find the parts I'm referring to):
Pg.13 "...Grandma Burton was in a home because she had senile dementia and thought that I was someone on television." I like this because of my last name :-)
Pg.32 When Christopher asked the reverend where heaven was he was told : "It's not in our universe. It's another kind of place altogether". Christopher reasoned that what the reverend said could not be true unless heaven was on the other side of a black hole. "...If heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice."
Pg.199 "People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But if they thought logically, they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice."
Pg.201 "Then she made me some Red Zinger herbal tea with sugar in it, but I didn't like it." (Red Zinger is made by Celestial Seasonings in my hometown of Boulder Colorado)
Good Start, Tired ending, and Apparently Religion is Stupid August 12, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I don't pay attention to book reviews, and I don't much pay attention to what's on the best seller lists. This book was in the cheap bin at B&N, so I parted with a few hard-earned bucks and took it home. I never heard of it, and I never heard of the author. Yeah, yeah, I'm not in the know. Whatever.
The first half of this book was so different, I couldn't put it down. I have no first-hand experience with people who have autism, so I can't vouch for its authenticity on that point. That said, seeing the world through an autistic boy's eyes was remarkable. The author did a great job of making me see the world in new and uncomfortable ways. With each chapter, I become more aware of a world beyond my American suburbia, and I don't simply mean physical settings. I've travelled a lot in my life, but I've rarely stopped to truly and earnestly consider life from a totally different point of view. This book helped, and made, me do that.
Good premise notwithstanding, what turned me off was the frequent digs at religion. After a little research, I learned the author is atheist to the core. That's fine, and he can write whatever he chooses. And he should. I was disappointed, however, to see his views expressed in such a cop-out manner. The author uses this young autistic boy as a puppet to express his views on God, religion, and how absurd it all is. That's the theme of the book, and that turned me off. I've got no problem with anyone's point of view, just don't con your readers into thinking they are getting a good story about something different. Write an op-ed piece or something.
Religion issues aside, the story, as some reviewers noted, wore thin about the halfway point. The whole last section felt bloated and tired. I was glad to be finished as the novelty of the book faded and left me feeling irritated and a little bored.
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