Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Although it was written in 2003, I had not heard of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time until recently. I was simply enchanted by it. The winner of multiple awards, this short novel is written from the perspective of a 15 year old boy with something on the autism spectrum. The author does an absolutely superb job delving into the mind, personality, thought process, desires, and motivations of the narrator. As the mystery novel unfolds, we become more engrossed in understanding what it's like to be different, to perceive the world differently than others, and to be perceived differently by the outside world. A short 200 page piece written in sections, its target audience is the nebulous "young adult," though I think anyone would appreciate and learn a lot from this novel.

In reading this book, I realized that I and many people I know have some traits of this "abnormal" boy narrating the book. We see how he adapts to his condition, how he gains insight to the way he is, and how he struggles and succeeds to function in the world. Many of his obsessions and compulsions reflect things I remember from my childhood: how certain arbitrary things would make a day a "good day," how I became obsessed with a very small niche of knowledge (like dinosaurs or planets), how I made lists and schedules. As we grow older, we conform into the people society needs us to be and lose some of those quirks that once defined us. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time returns us to that era in life when we valued our individuality, saw the world through a novel lens, and cared very little about how others were bothered by our oddities and awkwardness.

Image of the cover shown under Fair Use, from Wikipedia.