This is one of the editorial acquisitions I'm most proud of... I've bought rights for this novel while it was still in manuscript, before first publication and much before all the awards it received later... Also, I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Haddon twice... His a great author and very nice person and has good memory :) Unfortunately, he didn't sell well in Serbia... I changed him a publisher but with no better results...
Due to bad sales he won't be translated into Serbian, most probably :(

"و شاید ما واقعا یه مشت آدم غیرقابل کنترلیم"
کتاب روان و جالبی بود، خلاقیت کتاب رو دوست داشتم (این ک فصل ها عدد اول بود) ترجمه کتاب هم خیلی خوب بود نظرم.
کتاب خیلی قشنگ ذهن کریستوفر رو به تصویر کشیده بود، کریستوفرِ ساده و صمیمی که مبتلا به اوتیسم بود. اولش فکر میکردم کتابیه ک میشه یکی دو روزه تموم کنمش اما یکم طول کشید چون اون حجم از اطلاعاتی ک یهو میداد و آشفتگی ذهن کریستوفر یه خورده واسم غیرقابل هضم میشد. بعد به این نتیجه رسیدم ک بعید نیست رگه هایی از اوتیسم هممون داشته باشیم.
پ.ن: مسئله های ریاضی کتاب رو بسی دوست داشتم، با کاغذ و قلم کنارم کتابو میخوندم :د
پ.ن بازم: احساس کردم اخر کتاب صرفا تند تند میخواست همه چیزو سرو سامون بده و ی جورایی انگار افت کرد داستان.

“Il cielo non si riesce a toccarlo con un dito e la gente non tiene gli scheletri nell’armadio. E quando mi concentro e cerco di rappresentare nella mia testa frasi come queste non faccio altro che confondermi”.

Entriamo nella testa di Christoper, un ragazzo autistico, e vediamo il mondo dalla sua prospettiva.
Un romanzo di formazione da leggere a tutte le età!

Somebody, I can’t recall who, has said that fiction is successful with people in as so far as their ability to show compassion for others – our very ability to step in to others shoes. And, so if the character in question is more like us or is facing problems that we have faced or are facing – it is easier to show compassion, and the artist is more likely to be successful. However, that also means that one is not challenging oneself too much – both as an artist and audience.

Christopher is rendered too different from us by his circumstances – the problems he faced are not ones we had to face, and so it must be that difficult for a writer to step into his shoes. C. is a differently-able fifteen ear old boy; who can’t bear crowds or strangers. Also, he can only understand words in their literal sense- so, he has problems with metaphors including expressions like ‘apple of eye’ or vague xpressions. This sometimes makes him an innocent quibbler – to fury of his parents. His inability to filter the information his mind is receiving makes him anxious in new places.

Also, he has a problem using what is called ‘Theory of mind’ – the assumption (which in usual cases is acquired in children by age of three) that other people have a mind of their own; and which also another thing which help enjoy fiction. So, Christopher is not able to enjoy fiction; except for detective novels which he see as puzzles – and he loves puzzles.

These very problems make him excellent with numbers and logic – far better than most of us; he finds the world of numbers much more secure and likes spending time with them. He likes numerical and visual patterns; and he has a great love for prime numbers because they defy all patterns. He relaxes by solving complex mathematical problems and puzzles. Also, he has an incredible memory. He is a big fan of Sherlock Holmes - who had willingly worked hard to be as logical as Christopher naturally is. The very things that make him different make him more conscious of the way mind work than most people are.

All these differences are incapable of beating his courage. He has a goal, that of being an astronaut. We don’t know if he will achieve that goal but he definitely has a genius and a courage that makes so high an aim possible, and a positive attitude that makes him look at problems as puzzles and challenges to be fought. This story is example of the little victories, that he won against his social-anxieties, which can act as stepping stones towards his goal.

A very charming, insightful, engaging book. From the perspective of a 15-year-old boy who has a kind of high-functioning autism (which may not be autism, actually, but Asberger's?).

Some mature themes. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“For example, this morning for breakfast I had Ready Brek and some hot raspberry milk shake. But if I say that I actually had Shreddies and a mug of tea (footnote: But I wouldn’t have Shreddies and tea because they are both brown.) I start thinking about Coco Pops and lemonade and porridge and Dr Pepper and how I wasn’t eating my breakfast in Egypt and there wasn’t a rhinoceros in the room and Father wasn’t wearing a diving suit and so on and even writing this makes me feel shaky and scared, like I do when I’m standing on the top of a very tall building and there are thousands of houses and cars and people below me and my head is so full of all these things that I’m afraid that I’m going to forget to stand up straight and hang on to the rail and I’m going to fall over and be killed. This is another reason why I don’t like proper novels…” pg. 19

“I said that I wasn’t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder. Or if you see someone’s name and you give each letter a value from 1 to 26 (a = 1, b =2, etc.) and you add the numbers up in your head and you find that it makes a prime number, like Jesus Christ (151), or Scooby-Doo (113), or Sherlock Holmes (163), or Doctor Watson (167).

Mr. Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order, and I said it did.
Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.” pg. 25

t“Mrs. Alexander didn’t say anything. She walked to the little red box on a pole next to the gate to the park and she put Ivor’s poo into the box, which was a brown thing inside a red thing, which made my head feel funny so I didn’t look. Then she walked back to me.” pg. 57

t“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.” pg. 103

“And when I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn’t any space left to think about other things. And when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is even harder because people are not like cows and flowers and grass and they can talk to you and do things that you don’t expect, so you have to notice everything that is in the place, and also you have to notice things that might happen as well. 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 years 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.” pgs. 143-144

pooƃ ʎɹǝʌ ʇou puɐ ʎʞɔıɯɯıƃ ʎɹǝʌ sı ʞooq sıɥʇ

if you want to read an excellent book about autism in a young person, read marcelo in the real world. this book is like hilary swank - you can tell it is trying really hard to win all the awards but it has no heart inside. and yet everyone eats it up. C0ME ON!!

no one likes gimmicks.

come to my blog!

“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.”



Christopher Boone, a 15-year old math genius with Asperger's Syndrome, discovers that a neighbor's dog has been murdered. Uncovering the murderer and writing a book about it is the primary impetus of Christopher in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. Throughout the investigation, Haddon offers fascinating insight into how Christopher structures his world and relationships.

I'd read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night before, but read it again for one of my book clubs. I liked it the first time as well as the second time, but like murder mystery books the narrator says he is writing, a second reading is a different experience. 3.75 stars

“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.”

I liked this book more than I thought I would. I was a bit worried that it would be too "clever" and gimmicky, but it turned out to be very well written and kept my attention throughout. It was interesting to read a book written from the POV of an autistic boy and Haddon did a great job of working in Christopher's everyday approach to life as well the bigger picture of his family unit revealed through the snippets of adult interaction.

What was less successful for me was the whole "curious incident" itself, but perhaps that is more of a marketing issue since it's the main hook of the story. I also tend to enjoy books more when they are more emotionally involving, which tended to be mostly an impossibility with a narrator like this one. Still, I would expect to feel more than mild curiosity and mild pity when reading a story like this. A little more tension and little more excitement to go along with the intellectual exercise would have been great.

After finishing this book in 2019, I saw a marvelous theater performance based on the book. It was stunning!

Okay, I’m gonna try and review this book now. TRY being the key word.

… How do I review this??

Rating: 2* of five

I'm grateful to Mariah for commenting on this vanished review. I had no idea that it was gone.

I will attempt, through the group read, to reconstruct the earlier review.

***UPDATE***17 April 2017

I read this story 14 years ago, and the review I wrote then was testy because I was too often and too deeply reminded of Forrest Gump as I read it. I ***LOATHE*** every single frame of that film, including the titles, the union notices, and the copyright information. It is sappy. It is manipulative. It is far, far too convinced of its own cleverness. It smirks at its main character behind his back, smiles dazzlingly to his face, and expects all of us to get the joke: The dumb guy's got dumb luck! Haw haw. Like that Swedish hundred-year-old man farrago.

Yuck.

Now, on dredging this book out the dark corner where it's been blocking a draft for a good long time, I can be a little less wrathful about the story. It's not as mean-spirited as either the Swedish mess or the Gump grimness. I still don't like it, the similarity to the mean-spirited smirky stuff gets in my way far too much. But I can finally tell the difference between this story and those: This one is interested in angles of perception and fields of vision. The conceit is not the point here. The point is to experience the world in a foreign way.

While I don't particularly enjoy the story, I no longer want to hurl the book in the path of a draft so as to get some use out of it. (But back it goes because it's the perfect size to plug the space and nothing else I dislike is the same dimensions.)

Rating raised to 3 stars.

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.