Mark Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Vintage, 2003.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time had been on my to-read list for a while. The reviews all seemed positive, but the title caught my attention. Just as Infinite Jest gets its title by quoting Shakespeare, so this book’s title quotes a Sherlock Holmes story. There is indeed a mystery, but it is solved halfway through the book. Still, the story will keep most readers attention.

The narrator, fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone, is what we used to call an idiot savant, not unlike Dustin Hoffman in The Rain Man. Now we say he is autistic. He really is a fascinating character and a unique narrator.

The mystery happens right away. A neighbor’s dog is killed one night by someone impaling it onto the ground with a pitchfork. Christopher discovers the dog, picks it up, and continues to hold onto it while the police arrive. Being autistic, he hates to be touched, and hits the policeman who tries to question him. Christopher is immediately in trouble. His father explains his son’s condition, and he is released with a warning.

Christopher, a Sherlock Holmes fan, immediately wants to solve the mystery. Who could have killed (he uses the word murdered) the dog? The police and his father tell him to mind his own business. The single divorcee who owned the dog is not interested in his help either. Still, we can understand something of Christopher’s single-mindedness.

The narrative style is inimitable. That is the book’s real strength. We see things from an autistic youth’s perspective. Basically, he does not know how to filter things. He takes everything in at once. For example, on a vacation once many years ago, his family (father, mother, and him) stopped by a cow pasture. He can still recall there were nineteen cows, four brown and fifteen black and white. He begins to share the pattern of black and white on each of the cows.

That is why, for example, he hates crowds. There are too many people and too many things being said: He cannot keep track of them all. Once, he was taking a train from where he lives in Western England to London. He huddled on a bench in the station for hours because the stimulation was too much. He finally did get on a train, but it was a complicated procedure for him.

He also credits one of his teachers for telling him how most other people see things. He does not necessarily understand why or how they do filter things, but he does understand that most people are different from him.

He is very concrete. He hates metaphors because they are lies. However, similes are fine because they use like or as, so we understand the comparisons are not exactly the same. Although, his mother was part of the family when he was younger, he now lives alone with his widower father. The real crisis in his life comes not from the dog investigation but when he thinks his father has lied to him. How can he tolerate him?

Because he is very concrete, he is very good at math (maths in England). He hopes to pass his A exam in maths so he can go on to college. He prides himself in his logic, but his logic fails him with anything abstract or theoretical. For example, he takes certain theories of cosmology as fact, even though they are mere theories and not everyone agrees on them. He also is certain God does not exist. He has trouble understanding most jokes. And, as is true with many autistic people, forget facial expressions.

When discussing detective stories, he warns us about red herrings. He goes into some detail about The Hound of the Baskervilles, a story he really likes. He can identify with the intelligent but detached Sherlock Holmes. Yes, The Hound of the Baskervilles does involve dogs, but the story is a red herring. The title quotation comes from “Silver Blaze.” If the reader knows how Holmes solved that mystery, he would come close to solving the mystery of the neighbor’s dog. I can say no more.

The narration of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time carries us along. It does get complicated, and there is a lot more to it and to the conflict in the story than just the death of the dog. It is rich. I can see why it has been so critically acclaimed. It also is not afraid to challenge our current tide of relativism. This novel makes it clear that truth exists and that humanity is and ought to be committed to discovering truth, wherever it may take us.

Having said that, my library has this as a young adult (i.e., early teen) title. Considering that the narrator is fifteen, that is understandable. However, I could not help think of the film Billy Elliot. That is about preadolescent boys, but the foul language just keeps on coming. Do people in England really talk like that? The book’s narrator, very literal as he is, quotes a lot of foul language. Some young adult readers or parents of such youths may find the language distressing. If that does not bother you, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a gripping narrative.