The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by
Mark Haddon, is one of the most thought provoking and interesting books that I
have ever read.
The main character is fifteen year-old Christopher Boone. He
is a smart, high-functioning autistic kid whose view on life is particularly fascinating.
He likes Sherlock Holmes, and the colour Red, but detests the colour yellow. He
narrates the entire book, and gives an amazing demonstration of the autistic
mind and thought process, he brings the reader through scenarios that most people
would react completely differently to.
Christopher's descriptions
of events are funny and interesting, and keep the first quarter of the book
enjoyable, which is good because of the somewhat flavourless settings and
depressing story line. For example, one night Christopher finds his neighbours
poodle dead, with a garden fork jammed through his chest in the yard of a
typical English home. After discovering
that no one had plans to discover who murdered the dog named Wellington, Christopher
decides to investigate Wellington's murder (against the wishes of his father),
and begins to write a book about his adventure.
I found the first part of this book extremely entertaining
as it is written in such a creative and different way, and it makes me think
about other people’s perspectives on life and how different they are from me. I liked how the author introduced the dog’s
death so early in the book as it makes the rest of the book more fascinating
and attention grabbing.
I wish that the author would have developed a better setting
in the beginning of the book as the lack of depth made it a bit vague, however
from the little amount of setting detail that I did read, it painted a sleepy
and dull location which I assume was done so it contrasts the setting later on
in the book.
Overall I am extremely happy with my novel choice by means
of entertainment.
I kind of agree with you on the entire setting problem. All we really know at this point is the fact that the story takes place in suburban England. We have to rely more on our imagination to come up with things in the story. Most of the setting descriptions are vague and unintersting. The story is more focused on characters and conflict to drive everything forward
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