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

I first read this book a couple of years ago. A friend mentioned it in conversation and I decided to reread it.

The story is told from the point of view of Christopher, a 15-year-old autistic boy. The plot is fairly irrelevant to the book (I’ll expand a bit more on that), but the story kicks off with Christopher finding a dog that has been stabbed with a pitchfork. He decides to find out who killed the dog. Sounds simple? You’ll be surprised.

The reason this book is so brilliant is how realistic Christopher’s voice is. I confess that, like many people out there, I don’t know all that much about autism. I do know some people who are autistic, and I could probably quote some facts at you if you pressed me, but that’s the limit of my knowledge. Reading this book, though, made me feel like I understand. Quoting facts is all very well, but this book made me think about how it would be to live in a world like that day in, day out – or to live with someone who is autistic. The story is written almost entirely without emotion, but it’s easy to read between the lines and imagine the feelings of the other characters, even though only the barest facts are spelled out on the page.

To give you an idea of the writing style, here’s the first paragraph:

It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.

I remember reading in one of those women’s magazines some feature where someone answered questions about their life (favourite food, favourite book, marital status, best tip for saving money, etc.). They said that after reading this book, they quit their job in finance and retrained so that they could work with autistic children. That’s the kind of effect this book has on you (though perhaps not that much in most cases!). I just finished reading a post over at Scobberlotch about narrative voices that get into your head. This book is a prime example: Christopher’s voice found its way into my brain and wouldn’t let itself be forced out.

There aren’t many books I’d recommend as unequivocally as this one, but I think that this is a book everyone should read. It sold a lot of copies so you can probably find it at your local library – get down there!

(I know that a lot of people out there have probably reviewed this book as well: if you’re one of them, do let me know and I’ll post a link to your review.)