The Reading Group Reads...
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by MARK HADDON
...WAS THE BOOK GROUP'S CHOICE for January. The author has written many children's books, but won the Booker Prize for this in 2003.
"THE DOG WAS DEAD. THERE WAS A GARDEN FORK STICKING OUT OF THE DOG. THE DOG WAS CALLED WELLINGTON - IT BELONGED TO MRS SHEARS WHO WAS A FRIEND OF MINE - I WONDERED WHO HAD KILLED THE DOG."
So from the very first page we understood the pretty unusual title, and knew
there was a mystery to be solved. In this case by 15 year old Christopher, who
has Asperger's Syndrome and lived with his father and pet rat Toby.
Christopher, who during the course of the book gets an "A" grade in
"A" level Maths- but who has never gone beyond the end of his road
alone; who will only eat red food; who hates to be touched who doesn't
"get" jokes and finds it almost impossible to understand the facial
expressions of others.
Not a lot of skills there for a "detective", but despite his father's desperate pleas not to become one, he does!
Mark Haddon's extraordinary insight into the mind of a child with
Asperger's, enabled the nature of Christopher's life and his adventures
to be agonizingly and painstakingly to be laid out before us and the mystery to
be finally solved. We understood the finer points , the nuances, the feelings
of his parents and of his oh so patient teacher, Siobahn, who tries to make
sense of the world for him, but Christopher doesn't.
Some of us took this lad to our hearts in this moving story told with humour and pathos. Christopher unravelled a mystery and I think for some of us there was an unravelling and a little more understanding of what it is like to have Asperger's Syndrome.