The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Sometimes you accidentally buy too many books. The fact that there
are over 15 books sitting on your shelf, waiting to be read, begins to
stress you out. So you have to take a break from the epic you're
currently reading to knock out one of the shorter books. One of the ones
that only takes a few hours to get through.
And sometimes that backfires, because that short, easy book ends up being really complicated and it takes over your life in a way that leaves you unable to engage with any other literature for a while.
On Friday, I reached a section break in The Lies of Locke Lamora and decided that it was a good place to step back from that book for a bit. I've been enjoying it, but I've also been reading in fits and starts due to a lack of both attention span and time. I figured a quick palate cleanser would help me refocus. And maybe it will.
In the meantime, we need to talk about Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I remember Sarah talking about this book back in college (she and someone else were excited that they had both read it), so when I saw it at a used book sale, I picked it up.
The story itself is pretty straightforward. The narrator is an autistic boy who decides to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog. Along the way he uncovers a whole bunch of secrets, and by the time he's solved his initial mystery he's off an a completely different adventure. The prose is distinctive and easy to read. It purposefully comes across as a little juvenile, but I really liked the way Christopher's voice is presented.
The story itself isn't too complicated. It's everything surrounding the story that gets messy. Something about Christopher felt a little off too me. Not just that he's on the spectrum. He has weirdly varying degrees of self-awareness and social awareness. Both his stream of consciousness and his ability to parse conversational language belie his difficulty communicating. His claims about his memory match none of the research I've seen on either typical or atypical memories.
I decided to dig a bit, to see what the autistic community had to say about this book and this character. And, per my suspicions, this book is about as far from accurate as it gets. Haddon himself admits to doing no research, claiming that his imagination makes up for it. Which makes my skin crawl for a variety of reasons. Haddon has since said that this book isn't supposed to be about autism so much as it is about the experience of being an outsider. Which makes it a pretty gross appropriation of that experience.
I'm left with a lot of conflicting feelings. The story itself was good, quick, and interesting. The mystery played fair, and I liked the way the secondary plot was introduced and where it went. The ending dangled a bit, but it mostly made sense. I just wish that Haddon had either done more research or, as the adage goes, stuck to what he knows. As it is, you get a book that many people take at face value, and it only serves to perpetuate a bunch of stereotypes without ever digging deeper.
And sometimes that backfires, because that short, easy book ends up being really complicated and it takes over your life in a way that leaves you unable to engage with any other literature for a while.
On Friday, I reached a section break in The Lies of Locke Lamora and decided that it was a good place to step back from that book for a bit. I've been enjoying it, but I've also been reading in fits and starts due to a lack of both attention span and time. I figured a quick palate cleanser would help me refocus. And maybe it will.
In the meantime, we need to talk about Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I remember Sarah talking about this book back in college (she and someone else were excited that they had both read it), so when I saw it at a used book sale, I picked it up.
The story itself is pretty straightforward. The narrator is an autistic boy who decides to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog. Along the way he uncovers a whole bunch of secrets, and by the time he's solved his initial mystery he's off an a completely different adventure. The prose is distinctive and easy to read. It purposefully comes across as a little juvenile, but I really liked the way Christopher's voice is presented.
The story itself isn't too complicated. It's everything surrounding the story that gets messy. Something about Christopher felt a little off too me. Not just that he's on the spectrum. He has weirdly varying degrees of self-awareness and social awareness. Both his stream of consciousness and his ability to parse conversational language belie his difficulty communicating. His claims about his memory match none of the research I've seen on either typical or atypical memories.
I decided to dig a bit, to see what the autistic community had to say about this book and this character. And, per my suspicions, this book is about as far from accurate as it gets. Haddon himself admits to doing no research, claiming that his imagination makes up for it. Which makes my skin crawl for a variety of reasons. Haddon has since said that this book isn't supposed to be about autism so much as it is about the experience of being an outsider. Which makes it a pretty gross appropriation of that experience.
I'm left with a lot of conflicting feelings. The story itself was good, quick, and interesting. The mystery played fair, and I liked the way the secondary plot was introduced and where it went. The ending dangled a bit, but it mostly made sense. I just wish that Haddon had either done more research or, as the adage goes, stuck to what he knows. As it is, you get a book that many people take at face value, and it only serves to perpetuate a bunch of stereotypes without ever digging deeper.
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