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The Curious Incident Of
The Dog In The Night-Time Anuradha Sivakumar One of the first things that strikes the mind about this book is that all the chapter numbers are prime numbers, and that is just the first glimpse of the remarkable originality this book has to offer. Mark Haddon, the author, writes as an autistic boy of fifteen. The simplicity with which he educates the reader of the realities that Christopher Swindon has to face, being autistic and living in a world devoid of any emotion is brilliant. The world of numbers and logic is the only one that Christopher can comprehend. People, human emotions, physical contact and even the use of metaphors all confuse him because he cannot relate to anything by feeling, only logic is coherent for him. His teacher, Siobhan helps him understand people and what their expressions mean and how to interact with them. A savant at math, he sometimes calms himself by listing prime numbers and squaring the number two in his head, and he tells us that his "record" is 2 to the 45th power. Another distinguishing thing is his photographic memory, also his descriptions of places involve exact dimensions and he frequently draws maps to show places he talks about, a strikingly ‘ un-human’ robotic thing to do. As he seeks to order his day by the number of cars he sees of the same color (four red cars in a row mean a wonderful day, while four yellow cars mean a bad day, in which case he does not eat lunch and will not speak), we see how desperate he is to find some pattern which will enable him to make sense of his world. When Wellington, the pet poodle who lives across the street, is stabbed with a pitchfork and killed, Christopher decides to solve the mystery and write a book about it. Using his favorite novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as his model, he investigates the crime, uncovering many secrets involving his own family in the process. As he applies the lessons which Siobhan has given him for dealing with his overwhelming outside world, he also embarks on a most unusual, if not unique, coming-of-age story, and ends the book a much more mature 15-year-old than he was when he started, all this while amazing the reader as the square peg that fitted in a round world. The book is clever enough to be read by people of all ages.Despite being promoted as a children's book in the beginning, it has become a bestseller with a wide range of audience. |
