The curious incident of the dog in the night-time : a novel

In Mark Haddon’s widely acclaimed novel, an unusual and brilliant boy insists on investigating the mysterious death of a neighbour’s dog.This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are also no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time is a mystery novel shot through with poignancy with a 15-year-old Asperger’s/autistic narrator who tasks himself with solving a crime but who simultaneously has to negotiate adolescence and his parents’ failed marriage."Mr Haddon has deliberately created a story defined and limited by his hero's very logical, literal-minded point of view. The result is a minimalistic narrative – not unlike a Raymond Carver story in its refusal to speculate, impute motive or perform emotional embroidery ... Christopher's detective work eventually takes him on a frightening trip to London, a trip that Mr Haddon makes us experience from the boy's point of view as a harrowing adventure, as scary as anything in an action thriller. And it also leads to an unravelling of his own family's past ... Christopher emerges as a wonderfully vivid individual. He never for a moment feels like a generic teenager or a composite portrait of someone with Asperger's syndrome." - Mieko Kakutani, The New York TimesMark Haddon By 2003, Haddon was an established and successful writer for children whose Agent Z books - which he illustrated himself - had gained him an enthusiastic young following. The Curious Incident, however, was something quite different. Haddon says he wrote the book for an adult audience but it works just as well as a young adult novel. 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. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher’s carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing. Christopher decides that he will track down the real killer and turns to his favorite fictional character, the impeccably logical Sherlock Holmes, for inspiration. But the investigation leads him down some unexpected paths and ultimately brings him face to face with the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. As he tries to deal with the crisis within his own family, we are drawn into the workings of Christopher’s mind. And herein lies the key to the brilliance of Mark Haddon’s choice of narrator: The most wrenching of emotional moments are chronicled by a boy who cannot fathom emotion. The effect is dazzling, making for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing is a mind that perceives the world literally. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the freshest debuts in years: a comedy, a heartbreaker, a mystery story, a novel of exceptional literary merit that is great fun to read. This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christohper decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery story becomes more complicated than he could ever have predicted. Christopher John Francis Boone opens this novel with his compassion for a neighbor's dead dog. Christopher is fifteen, a mathematical genius, and austic, and despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, he wants to know how the dog died. When he feels accused of murdering Wellington the dog, he is even more determined to learn what is happening. Soon, as he investigates Wellington's death, he learns secret information about his mother Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. Local Disk -1 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time 1