The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Vintage 21 Edition - Softcover

Haddon, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099563169 ISBN 13: 9780099563167

Publisher: Vintage, 2011

Synopsis

A murder mystery novel like no other. The detective is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he begins a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

About this title

Review:

The title The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (or the curious incident of the dog in the night-time as it appears within the book) is an appropriate one for Mark Haddon's ingenious novel both because of its reference to that most obsessive and fact-obsessed of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, and because its lower-case letters indicate something important about its narrator.

Christopher is an intelligent youth who lives in the functional hinterland of autism--every day is an investigation for him because of all the aspects of human life that he does not quite get. When the dog next door is killed with a garden fork, Christopher becomes quietly persistent in his desire to find out what has happened and tugs away at the world around him until a lot of secrets unravel messily.

Haddon makes an intelligent stab at how it feels to, for example, not know how to read the faces of the people around you, to be perpetually spooked by certain colours and certain levels of noise, to hate being touched to the point of violent reaction. Life is difficult for the difficult and prickly Christopher in ways that he only partly understands; this avoids most of the obvious pitfalls of novels about disability because it demands that we respect--perhaps admire--him rather than pity him. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Exceptional by any standards. Both funny and deeply moving" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Outstanding. Heartening as well as richly entertaining. A stunningly good read" (Independent)

"Superbly realised. A funny as well as a sad book. Brilliant" (Guardian)

"A remarkable book. An impressive achievement and a rewarding read" (Time Out)

"A magical book. It's one of those books that makes you feel as though you have been on an emotional rollercoaster." (Carrie Grant, Sunday Express)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0099563169
• ISBN 13: 9780099563167
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288