ولفگانگ آمادئوس موتسارت
با آن که در آن زمان هنوز این اختلال شناخته شده نبود، بعضی با مطالعه ی رفتارهای موتسارت، به این نتیجه رسیده اند که او مبتلا به اوتیسم بوده: قوه ی شنوایی حساس، نیاز به حرکت دادن دائمی دست و پا، و در یک مورد، وقتی حوصله اش سر رفته بوده، پریدن و پشتک زدن روی میز و صندلی ها و در آوردن صدای گربه.

آلبرت آینشتاین
عدم قدرت ارتباط با دیگران، حساسیت به لمس شدن توسط د��گران، اخراج از مدرسه به خاطر مشکلات یادگیری، و انتخاب مکان های دور از دیگران برای مطالعات فیزیکی.

استنلی کوبریک
معروف است که این کارگردان معروف، وسواسی جنون آمیز داشته که همه ی جزئیات بی شمار صحنه های فیلم، دقیقاً همان طور که در ذهن اوست تصویر شوند و به این ترتیب، بارها و بارها، یک صحنه ی جزئی را برداشت می کرده.

تیم برتون
همسر این کارگردان (هلنا بونهام کارتر، بازیگر) وقتی برای یک فیلم، راجع به اوتیسم مطالعات جانبی می کرده، ناگهان متوجه می شود که بیشتر خصوصیات این اختلال، در همسر او نیز موجود است.

افراد دیگری هم جزء این لیست شم��ده شده اند، از نیوتون و ویتگنشتاین، تا داروین و میکل آنژ، و حتی لیونل مسی.
در داستان مصور "تیمارستان آرکام" یکی از پرستارها راجع به جوکر می گوید: ما نمی توانیم با اطمینان او را تحت "دیوانه" طبقه بندی کنیم، شاید او دارای گونه ای "فرا-عقل" باشد، که در اثر تکامل نوع انسانی ایجاد شده باشد.
در این شرایط است که آدم به فکر می رود که آیا اوتیسم حقیقتاً نوعی اختلال است یا نوعی فرا-انسان بودن؟ آیا می توان به صرف این که نابغه ای انعطاف ناپذیر است و نمی تواند با دیگران ارتباط برقرار کند، او را دچار اختلال دانست؟ شاید این ها لوازم نبوغ هستند؟

Why I chose to read this book:
1. a few years ago, I've read several positive reviews about this story, so I added it to my WTR list. Imagine my thrill upon finding a copy in a thrift shop! and,
2. August 2022 is my "As the Spirit Moves Me Month".

Praises:
1. author Mark Haddon's experience working with autistic individuals clearly shines in this story! From the first paragraph, I was drawn in by 15-year-old Christopher's life with ASD through Haddon's captivating writing style - I didn't want to put this book down! From the precision in the dialogue to Christopher's astute thought processes, I developed immense empathy for this protagonist;
2. the character development was executed very well! Even if some characters made dubious choices, they were believable. And because of this, the ending couldn't have worked out better than it did. It was also nice to see that Christopher had a reliable support system with EA Siobhan; and,
3. my emotions ran the gamut from laughter to heartbreak!

Niggle:
Christopher used some mathematical and/or scientific thought processes to work out various personal issues. I tried to follow along or, at least I tried to relate to it in this story, but, unfortunately, my poor little fishy brain wasn't on the same wavelength as Christopher's!

Overall Thoughts:
Over the years, I have taught students on the Spectrum, so it was lovely to see bits and pieces of them in Christopher's character. This story was such an eye-opening look into the world of ASD!

Recommendation?
A quick but enlightening read of how one person, along with his family and acquaintances, live with ASD. Check it out!

Silêncio Preenchido

“ I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”

Assim é o autismo: um silêncio preenchido

Melhor que isso... só os livros

Re-read for my Fall 2017 YAL class.

One of the best YA books ever, wonderful and surprising on so many levels. Very moving. As a parent of a kid with autism and another kid who is spectrum-y, it hits home for me in ways it might not for others. As with many mysteries, it features some misdirection; it appears to be about a kid with Asperger's Syndrome investigating a mystery about a dead dog in the manner of his hero (and also Aspergerish) Sherlock Holmes, but becomes an even richer and ever widening investigation of human tragedy and mystery and the complex nature of love and grief. I find it very moving, having read it several times.

My feeling this time? That almost half of the book is about the London trip when Christopher goes to see his estranged mother, and maybe that's a little too long; it makes the story into a kind of movie thriller of sorts, when the heart of the book for me is about mysteries, a dog murdered and just what that means for Christopher and his family, relationships, love, the grief and despair of dealing with a kid with special needs, that heartbreak, all stuff I have been through. I was divorced in the process of trying to deal with the anguish and despair and grief of discovering my son had autism, at the same time trying to do everything we could to try to reverse the process. So I could empathize with the parents.

One thing that is different in recent readings is that I have watched and rewatched the BBC Sherlock and the American Elementary and I have this as background for a very Sherlock-focused book (it's Christopher's favorite set of stories). I also have been reading Agatha Christie Poirot mysteries, so I have that related background. And, one course I have been teaching focuses on the relationships between psychiatry, the psychic/supernatural, horror/fantasy, spirituality, the literar vs the rational and logical, and some of that figures very much in this book. I had forgotten Christopher talks of faith and ghosts in this book with respect to logic and Reason. There's a consideration of metaphor and story for the purpose of making meaning, since this first person story is told by Christopher for a school project, a story of ever widening mysteries of life. I admit to tears in several places, earned tears from Haddon.

Qué libro tan bonito y emotivo!!

"A sus quince años Christopher Boone, conoce las capitales de todos los países del mundo, puede explicar la teoría de la relatividad y recitar los números primos hasta el 7.507 pero le cuesta relacionarse con otros seres humanos. Le gustan las listas, los esquemas y la verdad, pero odia el amarillo, el marrón y el contacto físico. Si bien nunca ha ido solo más allá de la tienda de la esquina, la noche que el perro de la vecina aparece atravesado por un horcón, Christopher decide iniciar la búsqueda del culpable.
Emulando a su admirado Sherlock Holmes-el modelo de detective obsesionado con el análisis de los hechos-, sus pesquisas lo llevarán a cuestionar el sentido común de los adultos que lo rodean y a desvelar algunos secretos familiares que pondrán patas arriba su ordenado y seguro mundo".

Christopher es un niño con TEA (trastorno del espectro autista) y nos relatará en primera persona la forma cómo él ve el mundo que le rodea, cómo se siente, cómo entiende las cosas, sus rutinas, sus manías, lo que le da seguridad, lo que le molesta o le altera, su mundo...

Los capítulos van numerados con números primos, pues él destaca en matemáticas y física. Disfruta con estos conocimientos y le dan seguridad. Como todos los niños con TEA, su mayor dificultad está en las relaciones sociales, la empatía y la expresión de las emociones propias y de los demás.

Una novela muy emotiva que nos acerca a cómo pueden sentirse estas personas con autismo. El caso de Christopher es uno entre muchos, cada persona con TEA es un mundo particular y con síntomas muy diversos. Por mi profesión tengo casos muy cercanos (con niños muy pequeños). Ellos no comprenden nuestro mundo pero nosotros debemos intentar comprender el suyo. Así podremos ayudarles en su día a día, intentando que avancen en lo que más necesiten, haciendo que nuestro mundo sea más fácil para ellos, acercándoselo con mucho cariño y comprensión. Aprendo día a día de ellos y con ellos y espero, simplemente que se sientan acogidos por el resto de sus compañeros y así, poco a poco, puedan integrarse lo mejor que se pueda en la sociedad que les ha tocado vivir. A mí con que me demuestren un poco su cariño (aunque sea a su manera) me doy por afortunada. Sin olvidar, por supuesto, a sus familias, mi más sincero reconocimiento y admiración a todas esas familias que acompañan a sus hijos en este aprendizaje, que es muy duro en muchas ocasiones. "No sabes lo que es que tu hijo no te haya dado un beso o te abrace en sus primeros años". Esto me lo dijo una madre y no se me olvidará nunca. Ahora lo hace.

No le he dado 5 porque quizá me ha faltado un poco más de profundidad en el tema del autismo; vamos que me he quedado con ganas de más.

Libro muy adecuado para institutos, bueno para todo el mundo.

"Normalmente. la gente te mira cuando te habla. Sé que tratan de captar lo que estoy pensando, pero yo soy incapaz de captar lo que piensan ellos."
"Pero los sentimientos no son más que tener una imagen en la pantalla en tu cabeza de lo que va a pasar mañana o el año que viene, o de lo que podría haber pasado en lugar de lo que ocurrió en realidad, y si es una imagen alegre sonríen y si es una imagen triste lloran."
"Y por eso a mí me gustan los horarios, porque son la garantía de que no te vas a perder en el tiempo".

Is this a book that's impossible to dislike?

‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، «کریستوفر» راویِ داستان، نوجوانی پانزده ساله با رفتاری عجیب است که البته میتوان او را پسری باهوش درنظر گرفت.. در صورتیکه خودش براین باور است که باهوش نیست و فقط مشاهده گر خوبی است.. کریستوفر برای هرچیزِ کوچکی در ذهنش سؤال ایجاد میشود و به راحتی از هر مسئله و هر جمله ای نمیگذرد و البته دچارِ وسواسِ فکری و رفتاری است. با این وجود، کریستوفر نسبت به بسیاری از بزرگسالانی که در اطرافِ خود میبینیم، شعور و فهمِ بیشتری دارد و با این سنِ کم میداند که خدا و بهشت و جهنم و دنیایِ دیگر و تمامیِ مسائلِ دیدنی، یک دروغِ بزرگ است که در حلقِ مردم فرو کرده اند
‎داستان از جایی آغاز میشود که کریستوفر، سگِ خانمِ «شیرز» یعنی «ولینگتون» را در حالی پیدا میکند که این سگ به طرزِ بدی کشته شده و چنگکی در بدنش فرو رفته است.. صاحبِ سگ فکر میکند که کریستوفر اینکار را انجام داده و او دستگیر میشود.. ولی بعد از بازجویی او را آزاد میکنند.. حال کریستوفر قصد دارد قاتلِ سگ را پیدا کند
‎کریستوفر با پدرش زندگی میکند و پدرش به او گفته مادرش بر اثرِ بیماری قلبی مُرده است.. ولی داستان به جایی میرسد که کریستوفر متوجه میشود که مادرش زنده است و پدرش نه تنها در موردِ مادر، بلکه در موردِ کشته شدنِ سگِ خانمِ شیرز هم دروغ گفته است.. بنابراین تصمیم میگیرد تا از خانه فرار کرده و به دیدنِ مادرش برود
‎عزیزانم، بهتر است خودتان این داستان را خوانده و از سرانجامِ آگاه شوید
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‎جملاتی از این کتاب
++++++++++
‎به نظرِ من بهشت وجود ندارد.. من فکر میکنم مردم به بهشت اعتقاد دارند، چون از فکرِ مُردن خوششان نمی آید و میخواهند به زندگی ادامه بدهند
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‎آدمها همیشه فکر میکنند، در موردِ آنچه نمیتوانند ببینند، چیزِ خیلی خاصی وجود دارد.. مثل نیمهٔ تاریکِ ماه یا آن طرفِ سیاه چاله
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‎امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ آشنایی با این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»

This book I read in a day. I was in a Chapters bookstore in Toronto (that's like Barnes and Noble to the Americans in the crowd) and anyway I was just browsing around, trying to kill time. When suddenly I saw this nice display of red books with an upturned dog on the cover. Attracted as always to bright colours and odd shapes, I picked it up. It's only about 250 pages or so. I read the back cover and was intrigued. I flipped through the pages and noticed that it had over One Million chapters. I was doubly intrigued.

So I walked over to the far wall of the bookstore to sit and begin to read a few pages. I always do this to ensure that I don't waste what little money I have on a book possessing nothing more than a flashy cover. (I do the same at the cinema - if I don't like the first 20 minutes, I get a refund. Restaurants, too: if I don't like the first ten bites, I walk out on the bill).

This is a book written by a Child Developmental Psychologist - I think that's the right term... - anyway, a doctor who works with mentally or physically challenged youngsters. The novel itself is a first person tale written by a high-functioning, mentally challenged boy in England who wakes up one morning to find his neighbor's dog dead on his lawn. The boy's teacher suggests he should write about the incident, which he eagerly sets out to do. So we have his first "novel", "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". He plays Inspector and tries to solve the mystery as Sherlock Holmes would do...

Of course, if he's going to write a book, that means he can take control. He hates the way other books have chapter numbers that increase sequentially (1,2,3). He prefers prime numbers and will number his chapters in sequential primes - hence, by the end of the book, you're reading chapter 123,314,124 or whatever (I ain't no math guy ;)

Now then, he also writes about other things in his life and through his perspective you get some tear-jerking moments of true, unobstructed humanity: the way his parents broke up because of his state, how he has all these dreams about being someone great and going to a top college, even though you know that his situation will never really allow it.

Anyway. I read this book cover to cover sitting on the floor of that Chapters bookstore. By the end of it I was absolutely bawling my eyes out. Never cried so much in my life. In fact, as I type this and think back on that story, I'm dripping on my keyboard (and I'm at my office!). However - these are tears of joy. The boy does it. He can do anything. It's the most uplifting book I've ever read.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels anything deep down inside.

I haven’t read a fictional account this heartbreakingly realistic in a long time. Kapitoil was close, but The Curious Incident paints a more complete picture.

The book is from the viewpoint of an teen boy with Asperger's syndrome named Christopher - his mom has recently died and he discovers a dead dog in one of his neighbor’s yards. The short list: he doesn’t read people’s emotions very well (like the android “Data” from Star Trek next Generation, if you will), he hates the colors yellow and brown, excels at math, hates to be touched (enter the fist: he breaks out a pretty nasty uppercut when it happens) and often loses his memory when he gets upset. Like many teenage boys, he dreams of long periods of alone time.

Since he doesn’t care much about other people’s emotions, he goes around knocking on doors in his neighborhood to ask who killed the dog. So he has your attention right away. He’s a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, who he perceives as the master of objective details that others overlook. Except that no one wants to tell him anything about the dog except the kindly, lonely old Mrs. Alexander, who finally breaks it to the boy that his mom was cheating on his dad. Then a lot more rains down.

The dad comes across as calm, especially to a young kid, yet is passive-aggressive person who doesn’t always realize how much clarity his son needs. When he tells Christopher to “drop all this investigation nonsense”, the son considers what he finds out from Mrs. Alexander as “small talk” and not what his dad forbade - “snooping around” the neighborhood asking about a dead mutt.

In fact, the father’s passive-aggressiveness and the son’s determination and objectivity make for heartbreaking tension. The crux of the story isn’t about the dog, it’s what the dad keeps from Christopher “until he gets old enough to understand”. Even though he’s autistic, we find out that Christopher is old enough to know anything - and will go way out of his way to find the truth.

This is a book that doesn’t end neatly and nicely because life usually doesn’t turn out that way. It just sort of ends. We learn a lot about autism, it’s very defined characteristics and why it’s so difficult for ‘normal’ people to be around. There is no one in the story who treats Christopher the way he wants to be treated except a counselor at school.

This is a good story in which we learn a lot about this condition. If the story needs to stall because the narrator is stuck on telling all the facts of a particular situation, then that’s what happens. You don’t necessarily comprehend why everything is written the way it’s written, but it somehow all feels important by the end. I raced through everything regardless.

And the boy’s objectivity lends a prophetic feel to some of the things he says. He wonders why people think they’re superior to animals, for example. His thinking is that in a couple of centuries the human race might evolve to where the human beings of today end up on display in a zoo. And if we all kill each other through war or wearing out the planet, then insects could end up being the most superior creatures on earth. He has interesting theories on the constellations, the Big Bang theory, major religions, etc.

Sure, a general comparison could be made to the movie “Rainman”, except that this book gives complete attention to the afflicted character, Christopher. It breaks down one of society’s more recent creations - the mental institution, one of the big barriers between “us” and “them”. You discover there’s a ton of humanity and things to consider and learn from someone you may have previously been too nervous to be around.

Such a terrible and overhyped book - please, if you want to write a book that is meant to make people feel sympathy (if not empathy) for the main characters, don't make him a sociopathic spoilt brat who ruins everyone's lives without feeling sympathy. Yes, he's meant to be autistic, but Haddon didn't bother researching autism at all so that point is moot. I can't describe how much I wanted this little shit to be ran over by a train when he went to fetch his pet rat (which had made an entirely understandable decision and ran away from Chrissy), but alas, he wasn't and he went on to ruin someone else life.

I can deal with a character that is evil (in the sense that they hurt others), but they have to have some charm or they just come out as one dimensional douchebags. There was nothing interesting about Chrissy boy, he just commented about how good he was at maths, how much he hated people (even when those people were trying to help him), and how hard his life is even when he is being mollycoddled. Make no mistake, I have nothing against autistic people, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of autistic people don't think they're God's gift and that everyone else deserves to die; my (admittedly limited) understanding of autism suggests that people suffering from autism have trouble expressing emotion, rather than being devoid of it. Haddon's lack of research seemed to show mainly in the fact that, even though the book is meant to be from the viewpoint of an autistic child, the understanding of autism seemed to be very superficial, as if Haddon had looked at child with autism and said "yep, what they say and act like must be exactly how they think... Better write a book about it."

Understandably, as I wasn't overly fussed on Chrissy boy, I did not enjoy the writing style at all. It was a recount of events in the most obnoxious way, appearing not to have taken any literary skill at all. It is very reminiscent of how I (and most others) used to write when I (or they) was five, you know, saying "and this and then and now and when and and and and" - I was sat there thinking "say 'and' again, I dare you, I double dare you!", and if I had been Jules (I think he was the one played by Mr. jackson), I'd have shot Chrissy boy around seven hundred times, because it seems the only word the author could think to write was 'and'.

If this had been fully a murder mystery, then I may have given this book a two stars (providing it was done well) because a good puzzle can make up for unlikable characters and shoddy writing. But no, the culprit was 'found' (he gave himself in without any tension leading up to the moment) and then the book turns into a family drama. A family drama about a horrible and boring family. Great.

This book lied to me, it should have been called "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and the Less Curious Incident of a Dysfunctional Family".

Another thing that really bugged me was the random God-bashing thing. I'm not a Christian (or religious at all), but it was not needed in the slightest, it was as if Haddon thought he may as well get Dawkins on all our asses. It felt really preachy and forced and it didn't fit in the context of that part of the story, it was just stupid.

The final point I'll make is that this book gives people a false view of autism, and many people who did not know much about the condition before may now think this unresearched drivel is correct.

4/5 Estrellas

Hondamente impresionado me he quedado tras meterme en la piel de Christopher.

He podido asomarme a la visión del mundo de un niño con capacidades especiales: su miedos y su valentía para enfrentarse a ellos, su manera de ver el mundo, su forma de relacionarse con sus semejantes, su inteligencia mental y su falta de inteligencia emocional.

Este libro es una lección de vida. Se entiende perfectamente el boca oreja que lo ha llevado a una popularidad que ni el mismo autor esperaba. Y gracias al autor por su sensibilidad y su capacidad para contarnos esta bella y dura historia.

When Christopher discovers the neighbors dog has been killed, he tries to find out who did it. Every time he tries, his father stops him. Can Christopher try to solve the mystery and find out why everyone treats him differently? Read on and find out for yourself.

This was a pretty good but sad read. I liked it all except for the parts that had math equations in it. If you like these types of reads, be sure to check this book out at your local library and wherever books are sold.