The curious incident of the dog in the night time

“The curious incident of the dog in the night-time”…….the title was apt enough to make me curious enough about the book. I was also a little apprehensive because my friend who suggested the book just couldn’t stop raving about it. I don’t tend to give in easily when people get too excited about something especially when it happens to be a movie or a book. This is because of few past experiences. And I generally tend to read a lot of reviews before I decide to read a new book. The reviews not necessarily have to be positive for me to purchase and read the book but I like it when I read reviews which are conflicting and thought provoking. I don’t trust and for that matter have vowed never to read book reviews by Indian media. After I found out that their reviews are mostly the bastardized version of the originals from the likes of NYtimes, Barns and Noble etc. using meaningless and mindless cutting edge technology (cut+copy+paste) just to save space and stick to word limit. I am sure that in Indian media more than half of the book reviews are written by reviewers who have never even read that book.

I don’t want to go more into book review and Indian media, at least for now. If I fell sane enough I will surly write about it in one of my future blogs.

Now coming back to ….”curious dog” as I have a propensity to call the book just to avoid the length of it’s title. But it entirely spoils the essence of such a fittingly chosen title. ‘Curious dog’ is widely different from “The curious incident of the dog in the night time”. I don’t have to bother about saving space neither word so in this blog I will use the title in its entire span whenever I am required to use it.

“The curious incident of the dog in the night time” is about 15 year old Christopher. Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands mathematics and is really good at it, he understands science and dreams to be an astronaut and travel to outer space someday. He knows all the countries of the world and their capitals. He knows all the prime numbers up to 7507. But what he does not understand is human being. He cannot solve the complexity of human mind with the ease he can solve a complex mathematical problem.
Therefore he is different, for others he is a boy who is mentally challenged or to be more ‘politically correct’ he is a boy with special needs. The pattern, equation, theorem or rational reasoning that he uses to crack an extremely intricate mathematical problem does not come handy to solve the behavior of the people around him. He cannot trust others, he does not like to be touched, not even by his own parents. But he loves animals, like his pet rat or his neighbor’s dog Wellington. And one evening when he finds Wellington, lying dead on his neighbor’s lawn, he decides to track down the killer and write a murder mystery novel about it. In doing so, however, he unearths other mysteries that bring his whole world crashing down around him. Throughout all his adventures, Christopher writes a book about the happenings and his experiences, and the book he writes is “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time”.
Extremely well crafted by author Mark Haddon “The curious incident of the dog in the night time” is book for all ages, for all kinds of reader. Mr. Haddon weaves into the book several concepts from contemporary research and theory on autism (neurodevelopmental disorder); for instance, one incident described in the book is in fact a recreation of a famous experiment regarding theory of mind. The book also contains a few logic puzzles, such as a description of the famous Monty Hall problem. Haddon also includes the extremely unlikely incident of seeing four yellow cars in a row (probability) and remarkably numbering the chapters as prime numbers. Lastly the book contains the complex intricacies of human relationship and it’s different faces through the words from the diary of it’s protagonist a 15 year old with special needs, Christopher.

I don’t want to go ushering praise for the book by picking up all the fitting adjectives from the dictionary because I have only one word for describing this book and that is ‘unputdownable’. Thank you Ritu for making me read this book.