Book Review-"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
First of all I never write book reviews...so this is unorganized and probably not too informative. It's just my thoughts on the book.
I've been wanting to read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon for a long time now, and so when I found myself wasting time in a Chapters store reading books about fashion in Tokyo, I decided I should actually read something...like a novel. And since I've wanted to read this book it's the one I bought.
I really liked the the idea of the story. A murder mystery, about a dog, Wellington, the black standar poodle. I had never read a story based on a dog or the murder of a dog so I thought it would be interesting, and it was at first.
The story starts of with main character Christopher, a 15 year austistic boy, discovering, Wellington, dead in the neighbors yard,with a pitchfork sticking out of him. This already has me interested.
After a unpleasant expierence with Wellingtons owner Mrs. Shears, and the police, Christopher decides he is going to find out who killed Wellignton and write a book about it.
I really like this idea and the book was really interesting for the most part, but of course there are twists and the book ends up being more about Christophers family troubles more then the murder of Wellington. Infact when he does find out who killed the dog then the story takes a turn and become really sad and dark and almost a compeletly different story and feel. I didn't really like the second half of the book to much.
Christopher as a main charater is alright, he explains everything he is talking about in great detail, so that you are never confused about anything that is going on. I did have a few problems with him though.
First of all, he is autistic, so he has certian personality traits, but I just hate a charater that has no emotion. He is almost completely emotionless, and kind of a downer. He doesn't believe in god or angels or anything that can not be proven by science. He seems to have little faith in anything other then math. He doesn't show any emotions towards the death of Wellington other then
"I like dogs" "I like Wellington " I am going to find out who killed Wellington" or "My mother is dead, but she didn't go to heaven because it doesn't exsist, she is in the ground decaying, which takes longer if you are in a coffin"
These aren't direct quotes but they are basically how Christopher views things.
Also, Christopher is 15 years old but the whole time I was pictering a little boy. His childish behavior obvisouly has to do with the autism but I couldn't get passed this imagine in my head, he just doesn't seem 15 to me.
Anyways my conclusion is:
This book is alright, it's not my favorite it didn't make me love the characters, infact it made me hate them. Maybe thats the point and if it is then I supose he did a good job.
Read it anyways.
The next book I am reading is
Requim for a Dream by Hubert Selby, Jr
Something I started reading a looooonnngggg time ago but never finished.