The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon – A Book Review

Claim to Fame : The book won the 2003 Whitbread book of the year award. It was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker prize.

The neighbors’ dog is dead. He was called Wellington and he is Mrs. Shear’s dog. Someone killed him brutally by driving a garden fork through him. Christopher Boone is the prime suspect since the dead dog is last seen in his arms. Christopher Boone likes dogs. He is 15 years old. He hits the interrogating policeman because he tried to touch him; he doesn't like anybody touching him. He needs to find out who killed Wellington; he decides to do some detecting and goes around the neighborhood asking questions against his father’s command.

            When we were children, we blindly believed in our history books, in the martyrs, the brave and the wicked and evil persons. We believed in our grandmother’s stories of dreadful ogres and that they hid behind bridges to devour humans. We were told that Jack & Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water and we never questioned if there wasn't another well or river or lake nearby. We simply trusted what we heard, what we saw. If my father convinced me as a kid that I could not touch the moon because it was too high above the mountains and some malefic forces had made the ladder reaching to it disappear, I believed him then but I don’t question him now on its authenticity because I grew up, I understood that everyone cannot have all answers.

            Christopher Boone is autistic. His mother died of a heart attack two years back. He never lies, he knows all about galaxies, is brilliantly intelligent to get an A grade in the A level math exam, he is brainy with equations, remembers acutely what he sees and aspires to be an astronaut. He does fall short on emotions and communicating though and feelings need to be explained to him. He needs to be told in detail and without any ambiguity for him to register. He can’t be told about the nonexistent ladder hanging from the moon!

            Christopher’s pursuit for Wellington’s killer opens up hidden closets and buried skeletons when he realizes that there is a lot that his father has concealed from him. He now knows who has killed Wellington, he discovers that his mother is alive, finds the letters that mother had written to him but were never handed over by his dad and knows where she lives. Why his father, who loves him the most, has committed such a lowly act he doesn't want to know. He just wants to get away from his father and this takes him on a daring journey to London to his mother’s place where there is another revelation to be disclosed.

            One character I really liked in the book is Siobhan, Christopher’s teacher who is gifted with an enormous amount of patience. Narrated in the first person, Mark Haddon writes intelligently and in a lucid manner presents the life of Christopher. It is a difficult subject to tread on. You are at times stunned at the clarity of thought that the child has and would want to be him in some difficult situations in life where you know the truth and dare to speak it devoid of emotions, hurt or pain - but then autism is not a choice. We, with a slightly better boon of communication face so many difficulties in routine life; spare a thought for the courageous Christopher for whom every other person is a stranger and bewildering, a simple journey on a train is such a mammoth and scary task. That he is a mathematical genius yet fails to understand love and care in the true sense does hurt though.

Just imagine this logical and scary piece of thinking by Christopher:

“And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.”

My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 6/10

Mark Haddon