Book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Author: Mark Haddon
Published: 2003 (Vintage)
Pages: 221
FINALLY. I’ve been wanting and meaning and planning on
reading this book for absolutely ages, and then I get a copy at the used book
store and then it sits in my trunk and then in a box in my apartment for
another couple of ages, and then one time at work one of my co-workers talked
about listening to it on audiobook and told another co-worker she had gotten to
the part where he finds out about his mom and wasn’t it so devastating?
I had no idea what she was talking about, but now I do, and
yes. Yes it is.
This is about a boy with autism who finds a dead dog in the
neighborhood where he lives with his dad because his dad said his mother died a
few years ago. The boy’s investigation of the dead dog turns up family and
neighborhood secrets that upset him because they butt up against his overruling
logic and he doesn’t know how to deal with them if he can’t count colors of
cars or fit into an exact timed schedule.
I kept forgetting the kid is fifteen, but that’s not the
writer’s fault at all. I don’t really work with teenagers anymore and let’s
face it, once one gets to college one actively tries to forget what it was like
halfway through high school, so I kept thinking he was a genius eleven or
twelve. He’s still a genius, and I love how that’s just incorporated into his
everyday thinking since it’s always been there, and I love the juxtaposition between
that and his emotional awareness, which is underplayed nicely because he’s not
concerned with it until he suddenly has to use it to get through stuff.
Very captivating voice, very solid reveal that grownups should
not be relied upon as the automatic moral guideposts, and very emotional payoff
from a very logical place. Bookshelf!
No comments:
Post a Comment