Beyond the Letters

The topic I have chosen might seem sulky or too depressive for some readers but sometimes it is highly essential to read something like that as such novels not only help to raise awareness and form a positive attitude towards people with mental issues, but also provide the reader with an emotional and memorable story definitely worth your time and patience. In this list I have made an attempt to collect the novels of different forms and genres which at the same time discuss different conditions so that each reader could pick something to his/her liking. 1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” gives the reader an insight into a life of a teen boy, Christopher, who has a condition of autistic spectrum , supposedly Asperger’s syndrome. Although the features of this disorder are described very accurately, the main aim of the author here is to describe the teen’s personality and make the character r...

Nina Simone, Mr. Bojangles and all that jazz I started the review with this song because even if you are not a jazz fan you absolutely have to listen to it before you read the book (and preferably while you are doing it and immediately after you’ve finished). Otherwise you won’t be able to fully appreciate the atmosphere. This tiny novel is simply jazz age reborn, and if you have ever read Fitzgerald you certainly have an idea of how it feels to read Bourdeaut. Jazz music  can be found in every corner of this story, the characters listen to it, dance to it, and live according to the ways of jazz age – drinking, having fun, enjoying their lives while they can, even though the world around them is breaking into pieces. This book is about escapism, about sacrificing reality to happiness and common sense to feelings. When you open the first page, you immediately meet  the narrator – a nameless boy of an uncertain age . What may seem indifference to the character in fact ser...

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...