Why did you read this book?
Yes, I read Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time because the book was described to me as “a novel with an autistic main character.”
That was a few few years ago. I am reading Haddon’s second novel, A Spot of Bother, and I have been wondering:
- Would I have read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time if its main character/first-person narrator had not been described as having Asperger’s Syndrome?
- Is it possible to read the book without thinking about it as “a book with an autistic main character”? That is, is the autistic identity of Christopher Boone necessary for the book’s narrative and plot?
Why did you read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time?
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POSTED IN: Asperger's Syndrome, Autism Lit, Books, Q & A
5 opinions for Why did you read this book?
Daisy
Sep 23, 2006 at 11:24 am
I, too, read The Curious Incident because of its autistic character. I found the book scary because of the predicaments that the main character gets into due to his “alternate” view of the world.
I have recognized characters that seem to have autism, but are not labeled as such, in many other books. Perhaps the “label” wasn’t necessary here; it just sold more copies.
Astryngia
Sep 23, 2006 at 2:56 pm
I had resisted the book for some time but then spotted it on our mobile library shelf and decided to take it out.
I read it each night before falling asleep and I remember saying to my husband - “You know, this sounds so much like son. Not so extreme but…”
This was some time before we even had a ’sniff’ at such a far-fetched idea that my son could possibly be on the spectrum.
So…I read it without thought of the autism - just an intriguing title and good reviews!
Lisa/Jedi
Sep 23, 2006 at 4:27 pm
What I liked about this book was the inside-out view of life from someone with neurological differences. I read it at around the time B developed binocular vision (after 1 1/2 years of intense therapy) & it really helped me to understand some of his seemingly out-of-nowhere adverse reactions to being in crowds of people or going into unfamiliar places. Reading Haddon’s book made me aware that B might be reacting to the sensory overload of seeing so many people at once or noticing for the first time whether or not he was familiar with his surroundings, so I was patient & hopeful that he’d get used to things eventually (& he did). I also like that the protagonist’s responses to the world are presented in a non-judgemental way. “The Curious Incident” was also one of the first ways some of our friends felt comfortable interacting with us about B’s autism. I welcomed having such a convenient starting place for those who were really interested in making the journey with us, but didn’t know how to approach us.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Sep 23, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Thanks, friends—I really appreciate your insights! I read the book after hearing that it was “a novel with an autistic narrator”—not that that was why I could not put it down.
Autism Vox
Sep 24, 2006 at 1:59 pm
[…] Autism as a mystery is an often-used metaphor in discussions of autism: It is a puzzle that needs to be solved, as an article in today’s Bergen Record (NJ), In autism’s grip, notes. More than a few accounts by the parents of autistic children have described autism as a mystery to “unravel” (see Karyn Seroussi’s 1994 book). The narrative of Catherine Maurice’s 1994 Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family’s Triumph Over Autism is structured as a mother’s quest to uncover the magic treatment to recover her daughter from autism. Autism, as psychologist Uta Frith writes, is an enigma. Indeed, a blurb from Patricia Stacey (author of The Boy Who Loved Windows) on the back of my copy of Cammie McGovern’s Eye Contact notes that is is a murder mystery “in the tradition of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. […]
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