8. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

by Mark HaddonFifteen year-old Christopher Boone is found clutching the body of a neighbour’s dog who has been stabbed to death with a garden fork. The dead dog’s owner calls the police and Christopher is questioned and the situation escalates. Insisting that he found the dog already dead, Christopher decides to investigate the murder of his neighbour’s dog Wellington on his own. Logically working around his father’s protests, he begins interviewing a list of possible suspects. His investigation creates a division between him and his father who is now forbidding further investigation and discovers secrets that will change everything. Encourages by his teacher to write a book, he writes about what has happened to Wellington the dog and in the process reveals how he sees the world and in turn, how the world sees him.

Original and captivating from the first few pages, this novel was a surprise and delight. The unique narrative offers an invitation to see the inner world of Christopher. His own condition is never identified but the reader quickly realises that Christopher has a singular way of seeing the world and moderating his behaviour.
"My memory is like a film….And when people ask me to remember something I can simply press Rewind and Fast Forward and Pause like on a video recorder….If someone says to me, 'Christopher, tell me what your mother was like,' I can rewind to lots of different scenes and say what she was like in those scenes."Innocent and literal, he sees the world in linear terms. Truth and order are how he organizes his world and he does not understand when others speak in euphemisms or emotionally. He is a fan of Sherlock Holmes because he sees what is and what is not and does not concern himself with what might be or could be. This perspective is quickly addictive. Both humerous and heartbreaking at times, I couldn't put this book down.

Book # 8 of my 50 book challenge