The Dog It Was That Died (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon)

Member Name: theediscerning

Product:	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Date:	09/01/04 (386 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Oooh, big numbers...

Disadvantages: The dead dog. What are you, heartless?!

"Chapter 2. It was 7 minutes after midnight." That, roughly, is how this book begins. You will notice the obvious quirk ~ the chapters are numbered using only prime numbers.

This is because of the most unusual character of the narrator, Christopher Boone. The cover blurb informs us he has Asperger's Syndrome, but the book never tells us this. The book instead uses brilliant use of confession and personal detail to let us know instead what this means for Christopher. He hates being touched, even by his parents. He hates brown and yellow, and for one foodstuff to touch another while it is on his plate. Any antagonism, and he will more than likely bury himself in internal white noise and ride it out, groaning outwardly.

Being a bit of a night~owl, Christopher finds the dog belonging across the road, a large poodle, dead on its family's lawn, with a garden fork through its side. Approaching the pooch he decides to give it a hug, only to find the animal's owner, Mrs Shears, screeching out of her house, shouting obscenities at him.

Christopher's response to this is to bury his head in the sand, as far as he can. He is still hunched up with a dew~covered forehead when a policeman approaches, called to investigate the dog's murder. As is the norm with the world around Christopher, no~one knows how to deal with him (even his own parents forget from time to time), and so the policeman grips his shoulders.

"And this is when I hit him".

That little altercation leads to a caution from the police, and despite a stern warning from his father, Christopher decides he must investigate the dead dog. This is clearly not going to be easy, as Father has a very strongly~put intention that the first suspect, Mr Shears, not be mentioned in the house at all. And how can a boy question the neighbours about suspicious behaviour, when he is loath to look strangers in the eye? He is 15 years, three
months and 2 days old, but all the same...

His age regardless, Christopher's syndrome means he is at a school for "special needs". This means he is taunted regularly by his peers, misunderstood by copious adults, and is mostly reliant on his friendship with Siobhan, the teacher who is guiding him through the writing of this autobiography.

Christopher's mind is such that he is a near~genius as far as maths is concerned ~ he can sit and go through cubed numbers like there's no tomorrow, and will be sitting his A~level papers imminently, but he cannot interact with adults with much success, as he cannot read faces. Beyond happy and sad faces, he just does not have an inkling, and where it comes to people using metaphors and more personal expressions...

However, theediscerning cannot lie, just as Christopher cannot. This book is not exactly about a dead dog and a garden fork. We soon gather there is another mystery afoot, regarding his mother, who he knows to be dead of a heart attack. With the help, reluctantly sought, of the little old lady across the road, he can find strong clues to this, which helps solve the initial mystery, only for a personal and hair~raising exploration to be launched in response.

The point of using a rather naive narrator is that we can see exactly where this secondary ~ in fact the primary ~ mystery is leading to. But because of that, the discoveries he finds are even more heart~rending, and our sympathies are heightened. That is not to say the second half of the book is not just as thrilling as the first, and even 20 pages from the end one will not be sure how the book will come to an end.

Having said that, Christopher is a perfect and perfectly sensible approach to the question of creating a narrator. For there is really only a slight remove between Christopher and us ~ at least when the writing is so clear and enjoyable that we can empathise so readily. We, just l
ike Christopher, would dislike being lied to on such a scale as he is here. Many of us would switch off, or like to, when faced with trauma. We often are in a position to not see what is staring at us in the face ~ or on the faces of others. And we can most certainly understand how horrifying the nightmares of the personal odyssey in the second half could be.

This really is a case of taking a very natural~sounding and evidently very well~researched fictional character to show us a story that is only partly removed from reality. This also comes in handy when the publishers wish this book to be known and released as both an adult and a teenagers' book. And apart from some very blunt language (several F words, and the C one too), this would most certainly entertain someone of the age of 12 or so up.

Any younger and they might not understand the differences between the real world they live in, the real world Christopher lives in, and the world as he sees it. And at that age they would be given a stunningly strong insight into the mind of someone with a 'mental deficiency', which, whatever the reader's age, could never be a bad thing.

The book is 270 pages long, but large print, taking up just a couple hours of time. Every cover quote says it is funny, but the humour is rather on the subtle side, with the approach of the narrator one step removed from irony. With the help of many diagrams and mathematical and scientific asides and inserts that it was hard work not to quote from at great length, it is entertaining, if not strictly funny, to see how Christopher's mind diverts itself.

But beyond all those quirks, and the initial red herring of the dog (Christopher understands red herring is a metaphor ~ he reads thrillers, when not buried in chaos theory), there is a completely engaging personal saga to be unravelled, which Mark Haddon does superbly. All is most believable, all the scenes are at just the right
length, and even with the sparsity of Christopher's esoteric descriptions, the whole experience is very filmic and vivid.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night~Time is indeed curious. It is also excellent, slightly scatter~brained yet highly dramatic, and heck, it might even be heart~warming. While there might not really be the impulse to rush and re~read, giving how clear and precise the plot revelations and character developments are, this still deserves 5 stars.

It will also help prevent you from winning a goat...


TCIofDinN~T is published by Jonathan Cape in two different hardback editions, with the ISBN 0-224-06378-2 (adult) and 0385605870 [insert own dashes] (childrens'). The handy price of £10.99 is reduced at amazon and elsewhere. It is also available on audiobook, and is in paperback on April Fools' Day.
It made the long-list of the 2003 Man Booker Prize, and is evidently more entertaining than any that got closer to winning it. It comes very highly recommended.

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