The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark HaddonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an interesting and enjoyable read. The best adjective to describe Mark Haddon's writing here is clever. The perspective of the autistic child is clever, although I'm not sure it feels entirely authentic. The puzzles and illustrations that take the reader through the inner workings of the protagonist's mind are clever. Numbering the chapters with only prime numbers is clever.
The difficulty with this kind of protagonist is showing character growth for the main character, and I found it difficult to tell how much Christoper was developing, or not developing. Either way I would have liked it to be clearer.
Bottom Line: Curious Case is worth reading, enjoyable and clever, despite having some limitations dealing with an unconventional protagonist.
Click Here for a post about Curious Incident and the bildungsroman genre
Click Here for a post about Mark Haddon and Aspergers
Click Here for a continuation of the above debate
View all my reviews
I found this an interesting read too, but yes, frustrating that there didn't seem to be any indication with regards to Christopher's development. A Spot of Bother was pretty good too, though quite different from Curious Incident. In fact, I think I preferred Spot of Bother more.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting Toni. I added A Spot of Brother to my reading list.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, I put off reading this book for quite some time, even though friends would recommend it to me, and it was even the town-wide read one year. This summer I finally read it and I loved it. I started out listening to the audio book in my car, but once I got into it I got the book because I couldn't wait for another car trip to find out what was happening with Christopher.
ReplyDelete