Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for autistic fifteen-year-old Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor’s dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favorite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is funny and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally.

The book is supposedly Christopher’s journal so the reader soon gets a read on who Christopher is. He is charming in an odd way, but he cannot comprehend the entirety of his deficits or the serious handicapping of his dream to be an astronaut. Although he cannot bear emotions from anyone he is not unemotional. Anyone with empathy feels Christopher’s agonies but he cannot be consoled by empathy on any level. His favorite sleeping dream is when he walks an earth where he is the only person alive. This is not a person to love, yet his parents adore him while at the same time tearing their lives to pieces with their unrequited love for him. It is a desperate existence for all of this family. Still, nothing can be done except to bear it; handling each Autistic meltdown with the only response that works: waiting it out patiently and sitting nearby until it’s over. 

I fell in love with the narrator, but I don’t know why – except perhaps that he’s innocent and confident in his variety of quirks, preferences, and behaviors that many would characterize as off-putting or anti-social. “And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going.” It is difficult for him to move through his world. It is difficult for those who love him to parent him. It’s even difficult for the police to assist him when that assistance is necessary for his well-being. But he’s unforgettable and I found myself rooting for his success in every interaction he has and each event that transpires. 

The title of this cover is really a red herring; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is more than a murder mystery if it’s even that at all. This is a story about growth; about coming to terms with the world around you; about confronting your greatest fears and anxieties; and about the painful realism of autism. More than anything, this is a tale about the harsh realities of life.

The Curious Incident is as entertaining as it is enlightening, as lighthearted as it is emotional. Christopher’s mind is an intriguing one to live in, his thought processes refreshing in their straightforwardness. Because the powers of description as found in your typical novel are often beyond him, the writing doesn’t waste any time in getting to the point, a refreshing break from the otherwise flowery language I’ve become accustomed to reading, yet somehow it is still just as deep and thought-provoking. “I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them” Haddon wastes no words in making every character come to life, using minimal description and even less dialogue. I found this to be a very quick read, something that I was in desperate need of after reading a plethora of seemingly never-ending fantasy books, and a month-long reading slump. 

It is a truly remarkable piece of fiction, that takes a high-functioning person with a social disability that not only shares their struggles but also goes all-out to highlight the positives of having such a condition.