Book Report

Title
The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time

Author: Mark Haddon
Year of birth: 1962

Biographical data
Haddon studied English at Oxford and won for this book the Whitebread Book of the Year Award in 2003. The book is written from the point of view of a boy with the Asperger syndrome. Haddon worked as a young man with autistic children.

Source
www.wikipedia.com

Title: The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time
Year of first publication: 2003

Explanation of the title: The book starts with a killed dog in the garden of his neighbour. Christopher decides to be a detective and he finds out a lot more than who’s the killer of the dog.

Genre
The genre is a psychological novel, but it’s also a kind of a diary. It also has something of a novel of matters.

Short description of the main character(s)
Christopher Boone is a fifteen-year-old who has the syndrome of Asperger. He doesn’t like to be touched and trusts only a few people. He also doesn't like changes. He is very good in maths and can concentrate very long or sit somewhere for five hours without doing anything. He writes the book as some kind of a diary.
Father is the father of Christopher and has killed the dog Wellington.
Siobhan is his psychiatrist at the school and he really trusts her.
Mother is the mother of Christopher and Christopher thought for years she was dead, because his father told him that. He finds out that she ran from him and his father because she loved someone else.

Plot
Christopher finds a killed dog named Wellington, in the garden of his neighbour and he decides to make an investigation. First he can’t find anything, but later he finds letters from his mother, who he thinks is dead. When he thinks very hard, he comes to the conclusion that his mother is still alive. His father finds out that Christopher found out about his mother and tells him everything including that he killed Wellington. Christopher doesn’t trust his father anymore and thinks that he’s going to kill him too. He can’t stay any longer in his house and runs of to London. It’s frightening but he makes it to his mother house. At the end he’s trusting his father just a little bit more and you know everything is going to be alright.
Narrative structure: chronology, flashbacks; point of view; time span
The book is chronological with a few flashbacks. The book is told from the first person narrator.

The time spans about a month or two.

Theme
The theme is about being autistic and living with it.

Opinion
I knew that Christopher was autistic before I read the book because someone told me. For that reason I could prepare myself pretty good for how the book was going to be. I liked the book really much but I don’t think I could have the patience to handle Christopher in real life. Sometimes it really annoyed me that he was autistic. For example when he’s at an Underground station, his pet rat Toby walks over the rails of the Underground and than there comes a train and a man saves Christopher’s life. He begins to scream because he doesn’t like to be touched. Then I think: why are you acting like this?! Someone just saved your life.
Another part of the book I didn’t like was the maths and the books that he described, because I don’t like maths that much as he does and I didn’t understand everything of it either.
However I did learn a lot of this book, I know a lot more about how to treat a autistic person now.