curious incident

Pete Wild loves this one...

Yes indeed - The Curious Incident is great (for those not in the know - it's ostensibly a children's book - narrated by a teenager with Aspberger's Syndrome - which is a kind of autism - the kid loves maths but hates the colour yellow, deals with everything logically, tries to assert mathematical principles to human behaviour etc etc) - the book opens with the kid discovering a neighbour's dog killed with a pitchfork through it's belly - and the kid attempts to solve the "mystery" - but everything (inevitably) falls apart . . . It's not perfect (it wobbles a bit toward the end) and I'd dispute it's status as a children's book (because the father effs and blinds something rotten) but - I read it on holiday in May and it was one of those books that you find yourself reading aloud from to whoever is close . . .

I heard it (read very well) on Radio 4. Excellent. It felt as if there wasn't much to it, but I think that's because it was abridged. The book looks much meatier, and it's got pictures and maths and everything! The way the boy reads situations literally is well conveyed.

I know this is a minority opinion, but I hated it. It started well but fizzled out after about seventy pages, in my opinion. The narrative voice is all over the place. The boy is supposed to be fifteen but comes over as about nine mentally. Which he obviously isn't because he is shown to have, in many ways, an advanced brain, and he is physically strong. He pisses himself twice, which is insulting towards Aspergers kids. The real problem with the narrative voice, in my view, is that the first-person narrator has to have the knowingness to convey his own unknowingness. For example he says he doesn't understand jokes, but he has to understand them to explain why. And then he goes on himself to make jokes throughout the book, which he has to go round the houses to justify given that he doesn't understand jokes, he said. The same with metaphors. He says he doesn't understand them and then keeps using them and elaborately excusing them. I felt that the author's voice was getting tangled up with the boy's in ways that undermined my belief in the mental syndrome the boy was supposed to have. The narrative flow is repeatedly interrupted by dissertaions on various mathematical and spacial subjects, which becomes tiresome, and are also unbelievable as expalnations of the boy's consciousness, in my opinion. He explains in diagrams, for example, that he cannot understand the expressions on people's faces. But he has to have a knowledge of them to explain that he doesn't understand them. Plotwise the book shoots its bolt too early. It sets up quite well as a mystery about who killed the neighbour's dog, with various strands interwoven that relate to the boy's life. All well and good - but the mystery, and all that unravels from it, is solved too early, leaving the rest of the book as an extended and disjointed coda. In other words, the book doesn't have a satisfactory arc, I'd suggest. And underneath all Christopher's dreary "explaining", the actual story is very flimsy - a short story's worth, I'd say (or maybe two: one about the dog mystery and one about the unbelievable fate of Christopher's mother.) But I am probably wrong because all the critics love the book and it is doing well in the bestsellers' chart. d.beswetherick.

I bought this book for my brother who jumped off a fence and landed and broke his foot. I thought it would be good to read in hospital because it had some nice pictures in it. My brother liked it. His girlfriend liked it too although she asked me if it really was written by someone who is 10. I showed her the author photograph on the inside back cover. He doesn't look 10. "Well," she said, "he might have some disease that makes him look older than he is." That's true, he might. Although I doubt he is 10 because publishing is a slow business. Even if you sent a book off when you are nine it probably wouldn't come out until you were 11. I almost know this for a fact.

Cracking post, Drew. Are you ten?

What you are saying, d, didn't come across in the radio reading... for instance I can remember the boy reading some signs/posters, which he mistook for one sign. So he seemed to be reading across when he should've read down. I think. Anyway it made little sense (especially to a listener) and the boy didn't pretend to know or not know it. And surely he can draw a picture of an expression without first having some knowledge of what it means? He can recognise it as different from another. But I don't know anything about the condition. But plot-wise it was pretty thin, which I put down to them cutting a lot out for radio. He travelled around on trains and then it ended, declaring that he'd solved the 'mystery.'

I think he solved the mystery before he got on the train. Or it was solved for him. * By the way, despite reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories as a kid, I hadn't realised the source of Haddon's title. But I came across it by chance in Brewer's the other day. I love it: "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

I would like to start a new debate on 'The curious indident of the dog in the night time' by 'Mark Haddon'. The book was not intentionally written as an insight into someone with aspergers syndrome; it was just cleverly marketed that way. If you read between the lines and think about it, it actually reads like a revenge novel. Sort of like an ex wife or girlfriend writing about someone a couple of years later and likening thier past male partner to having the perception of a child-a lot of women do liken men to have 'never grown up' and women often say they are like 'mothers' to their partners. The link with Aspergers syndrome was realised well after the book was started. There are some unique ambigious and subtle references, clearly intended for an adult reader, apparent especially in the letters to 'Christopher' from his 'mother'. If you look at these this is obviously the case. Some of these phrases are incredibly, incredibly subtle, but also extremely, extremely bitter. It is almost like the writer(s) start off in an attack and then suddenly the novel switches to a mystery and then an adventure, in that they just started writing and let the writing take any particular course. The disjointedness and jumping from past to present and back again in no particular order proves this. Somebody as concise and as clever mathematically as 'Christopher' is portrayed would surely put events in precise chronological order. This is evident when his mother says in one of her letters: 'And I know you always like to know what time it is. As someone mentioned above, the book doesn't have a satisfactory arc; if 'Christopher' can set out his maths problems, graphs etc, (not to mention his timetables when he lived at home with his father, his list of behavioural problems and draw a compicated puzzle with metal rods) to the letter then surely he would be a lot more orgainized and structured in his story. Lucky author, but only thanks to his university/marketing buddies. Thats all I will say. As for the ex husband/boyfriend the book is directed at, I WONDER HOW HE FEELS?

thanks, i will give it a go...the publisher released a childrens version as well as adult, i think maybe its only the jacket thats different - but maybe the swearings not there or something.