“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon

Our century is marked by increasing tolerance to diversity, which makes me feel very optimistic about the future, and although the problem of tolerance is still very topical and notable and I’m not sure it could ever be solved once and for all, the changes in this sphere are very visible. One thing we all need to learn is to accept and communicate with people who have certain mental conditions and here the books like “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” are highly helpful.

If we compare the images of such people in modern novels and in the works of previous centuries, we can notice that the focus has obviously shifted. For instance, in Victorian age people with mental disorders were described mainly in a gloomy key and appeared to create gothic atmosphere or contrast the positive character (let’s remember the infamous wife of Mr. Rochester in “Jane Eyre” or “The Secret of Lady Audley”). This happened due to the lack of understanding of the problem and slow development of psychology and psychiatry. But less than a hundred years later these branches of medicine moved further and consequently the writers accepted a new viewpoint becoming interested in the inner world of such people, the peculiarities of their communication with others as well as in the possible causes of mental disorders. I can name some prominent examples which give us an insight into certain conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (“Perfect” by Rachel Joyce), multiple personalities disorder (“The Fifth Sally” and “The Minds of Billy Milligan” by Daniel Keyes) and intellectual disabilities (“Flowers for Algernon” also by Keyes).

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” gives us an insight into a life of a teen boy, Christopher, who has a condition of autistic spectrum, supposedly Asperger’s syndrome. This condition is characterized by:

·   difficulties with social interaction (Chris can’t stand being touched and feels sick when surrounded by too many people),

·     intense preoccupation with one or two interests (in Chris’s case these are mathematics and astronomy),

·      restricted emotionality and lack of empathy (Chris is unusually reserved in his own feelings and in most cases unable to understand the feelings or mood of others, especially by their non-verbal behavior such as gestures, intonation, eye contact and so on),

·  very sensitive visual and auditory perception (the character is able to memorize everything that surrounds him in smallest detail, which is sometimes very useful but due to his inability to see the whole picture of the puzzle rather than all its small pieces separately he often feels overwhelmed by the new information and unable to receive it).

So, as one can see, the author is very faithful in his descriptions and gives the reader a fairly profound image of what the world looks like to Chris. Notwithstanding such accuracy of image the author himself claims that he didn’t make much effort to study the issue of autism and imagined a lot of things himself. Mark Haddon insists that his main aim was to depict not a mental condition but the person behind it. The writer doesn’t even use the word “autism” or other medical terms to describe Chris, he doesn’t want his character to be labelled, he wants the reader to see a personality, perhaps a little queer but certainly likable and relatable.

“Relatable” is a very important word here, by the way, as Haddon does his best to let his readers step into Christopher’s shoes and go through all the adventures together with him. Some ways to facilitate this process are style and narration.

This novel is done in the first person narrative (the boy tells about his life himself) that certainly adds to general emotionality of the story and while Chris fails to be empathic the reader can’t help being.

The language of the story is plain and straightforward, due to his peculiarities Chris is unable either to understand metaphors or use them, so the style sometimes resembles a scientific report which surprisingly doesn’t affect the emotional side of the story but at the same time adds to credibility of it. The author uses a lot of scientific terms and even adds some mathematical problems to help Chris share his passion, even the numeration of chapters serves to describe the character as the narrator chooses to use prime numbers instead of traditional numeration.

The narrator defines the genre as a detective story and at the beginning it looks as such: the boy finds a dead dog of his neighbor in the garden and decides to investigate into this case. He consciously tries to introduce some detective features into his writing:

“So I asked her the same question again, because in a murder mystery novel when someone doesn’t want to answer a question it is because they are trying to keep a secret or trying to stop someone from getting into trouble, which means that the answers to those questions are the most important answers of all, and that is why the detective has to put that person under pressure.”

Detective stories, especially those about Sherlock Holmes are the only books Chris really likes as they are based on logic and deduction, both being perfectly clear for him, and don’t involve “unnecessary” descriptions or contemplations which the boy finds hard to understand.

The author also introduces some allusions to Conan Doyle stories, the dog as a trigger to the story is used in the famous “Hound of Baskervilles”.

Also the title itself hinting at the dialogue from the story “Silver Blaze”:

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Like Holmes’s mystery this novel is not about the dog at all, the dog did nothing, but Chris did everything imaginable and unimaginable after the curious incident have him a push.

However if I were to state the genre of this novel I would say it should be memoirs as the detective line is by no means the major one, the main focus remaining on Chris’s thoughts and feelings.

The tone of this book, notwithstanding all the problems Chris faces, is generally optimistic, the author emphasizes that manages to overcome himself in many ways during his story and do things which previously seemed impossible for him, like writing a novel or travelling across the country. Also the author tries to highlight his strong sides like mathematical talent, decisiveness and love to animals.

This review might have seemed cold and reserved for you but perhaps I only have adopted the author’s style and anyway my feelings towards this novel are not cold at all, and I’m grateful to Mark Haddon for such a wonderful insight into a different viewpoint on our world.