Book Summary 1 Nienke Raaijmakers 

1. Title explanation

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time:

The story is about a boy, who found a dead dog in the garden of his neighbours. He’s going to find out what happened that night and who killed the dog (because he saw that the dog had many bleeding wounds which were made with a pitchfork).

2. Summary

The book is about an autistic, 15 year old boy, his name is Christopher. He lives in Swindon, near London. He knows every country of the world, including the capital cities and he also knows every prime number until 7507. Christopher loves facts, numbers, formulas and logic. He doesn’t like people that much, because he can’t really understand their emotions. But he loves dogs, because they only have four emotions: happy, sad, angry and concentrated.

The story starts with the home-coming from Mrs. Shears (the neighbour) and her murdered dog. Because Christopher loves dogs and detectives, he’ll fix the mystery of the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time”. He’s going to ask neighbours if they maybe have seen some suspected things. All the information he gets, he writes down in a little book.

His father doesn’t like that very much. He told Christopher not to be curious about other people’s lives. But Christopher doesn’t listen to him and he continues his research. He tells the reader that the book “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” is actually written by him.

The book is not only about Christopher and his research. It’s also about Christopher’s life. His mother had a heart-attack when he was a little boy, but he can remember things very well, so he tells the reader of the book everything he still knows about his mother. He also explains some (math)mysteries.

One day, his father found his book, read it and took it away from Christopher. Christopher didn’t like that, and he would search his book to get it back. When his father goes away to repair some (heating) boilers, Christopher’s going to find his book. But he actually didn’t only find his book. He also found some letters, with his name on it. Of course he’s very curious about that, and he took the letters to his own room. When he read one of the letters, he gets immediately stomach ache. The letters are from his mother, and she wrote it not a long time ago! So, that means she’s alive, and the letters explain she has been living in London all the time.

Christopher’s father came home, and saw the letters. He’s very sad, because he didn’t explain anything about Christopher’s mother and he saw just right then that Christopher is very angry about him. Father tells the whole story to Christopher, and he also tells Christopher that he’d killed the dog. Christopher doesn’t understand if it’s a joke or not. Then he’s very afraid of his father and runs away, to his mother in London. After a long travel, her found her house. He sees that his mother is living together with Mr. Shears, his father’s biggest enemy!

Because his father had told the police about the flight of Christopher, his mother and him can’t stay in his mother’s house. They move back to Swindon, and live together in a little house. Because Christopher doesn’t like his father any more, his father tries to make him happy and he felt sorry, so he gave Christopher a dog, named Sandy.

3. Theme

The book has a few different themes:

- family / love: Christopher loves his parents, it doesn’t matter for him his mom left him

and his father because she died, because, like Christopher told the reader, the

memories are the ones which count.

- Detective / Murder: The dog that Christopher found has been murdered by someone,

and Christopher tries to find out who killed the dog, and he’s going to be a detective.

4. Characters

There are a lot of people in the book, but I think they’re not that important, because they’re only a few sentences in the story. The most important people are Christopher and his dad.

- Christopher: Christopher is a round character person. In the beginning of the book, you

get the impression that he’s a shy, but also a very curious guy.

When you’ve read the book a while, you know that he definitely is a curious guy: he

doesn’t have to find out who killed Wellington (the dog) and why. But because he’s very

curious: he’ll found that out.

Christopher is also a cheeky boy, which means that he doesn’t always listen to his dad

and, because he doesn’t listen, makes the wrong decisions. You also get to know that

Christopher is a very smart guy: he knows the prime numbers until 7507 and loves logic

and math.

At the end of the book, you get to know that Christopher is a fighter, which means that if

he thinks he can do or fix something, he’ll do his very best to make that come true.

- Father: The father from Christopher is a flat character. He doesn’t have that many

characteristics which are explained in the book. The only things the reader knows about

him is that he’s a very friendly man and he likes his work a lot (he’s a heating-boiler

fixer, and he enjoys it to work with his hands). The reader would expect that he’s very

sad because his wife is dead, but in the end of the story is showed the reader that his