The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time: Being Different Can be Frightening, but Inspiring

a mystery novel by Mark Haddon

published May 2003

“I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”

Christopher Boone is a 15 year old autistic kid who likes Sherlock Holmes and mathematics. One day he finds the neighbor’s dog dead with a garden fork sticking out of its body. He sees the entire event as a mystery to solve so he embarks on a journey to find out who’s behind the murder.

This mystery-solving project of his had allowed him to talk to other people in the neighborhood whom he had never interacted with in the past, being someone with autism who views the presence of strangers as threats and only locks himself in the safety of his own house. Also, he was able to go to other places he never went before, such as train stations and more of the outside world.

The novel is told in the perspective of Christopher and since he is a “mathematician with behavioral difficulties” and doesn’t like the color yellow because “it reminds him of custard, bananas, and sweet corn” and also doesn’t like brown because “it reminds him of dirt, gravy, and poo“, I found the novel to be rather interesting, and entertaining. And the delivery of how unique Christopher feels and what he thinks about certain things is brilliant. His view of the world is so different it opened my eyes to things I had never paid attention to.

I was shocked after finding out the real drama of the story, being what happened in Christopher’s family. I didn’t really see it coming. Setting aside how amusing Christopher’s storytelling is, I find it quite heartbreaking that such thing happened to him and his family. And it feels sad that Christopher is oblivious to all the feelings and tension brought about by his family circumstances, being someone who is limited to feel such emotions due to fear and pure logical way of thinking, and well, his condition.

But I like how the novel ended, in which Christopher felt really happy after all what he gained from all of his adventures, and not to mention having to achieve his goal of getting an A on his maths exam.

My rating is 4.2/5.