Mark Haddon

Enjoyable book to read, but a bit of unnecessary bits of information. However, this was probably the way the author could help us understand the way the brain works for autistic people. Christopher finds a dog in his neighbor's yard that someone put a garden fork through. Christopher decides he is going to find out who killed the dog and he is going to write a book about it. It turns out that his father killed the dog in an act of frustration and anger toward the owner who he thought was growing fond of him and his son. This is because the neighbor's exhusband went off with Christopher's mother and divorced his father. Christopher's father had told him that his mother had died of a heart attack and since he has trouble being around people he could not go to her funeral. He only found out because he was searching for the book he had begun to write that his father had taken away from him. He found the book in his dad's closet along with a few dozen unopened envelopes addressed to him. Upon opening them he discovered they were from his mother. His father happened to come upon him with the letters in hand and confessed to killing the neighbor's dog and not telling him what really happened to his mother. Because his father killed the dog, Christopher no longer feels safe with his dad so he decides to move to London to be with his mother. This was quite an adventure for a boy who did not like strangers and loud noises.
Kirkus: Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.

Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.

A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.… (lisätietoja)

The book opens with an exciting balance between the world of a child on spectrum and the magic of his imagination. We are then led through a grim world in which the adults around him are struggling to support him and are loaded down with their own problems. The main character goes on an adventure and somehow comes out of it with more content balance.

Given the style of the text and how it replicates a constant internal dialogue going through “what it might be like to be autistic”, it is amazing that the author also manages to keep his reader engaged. The presumption on this narrative voice is forgotten because of his poetry.… (lisätietoja)