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Writer's pictureAshley Mongrain

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Updated: Jul 11, 2021


Rating - ⭐


"Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.


Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is funny, poignant and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally."


 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a short standalone fiction novel by Mark Haddon.


I am going to tell you straight up, that for me, this was a complete waste of time.


I went into this thinking that this was going to be a young Sherlock-esque kind of mystery book. While that aspect is definitely in there, that's not what the focus of the book was about, and that focus, I did not enjoy at all.


This book was more or less our main character's, Christopher, thoughts just thrown on the pages. Because of this, the topics jumped around a lot and the narrative read as just a series of thoughts (this happened and then this happened and so on). It was very much so like listening to an excited kid talk about what happened at school that day. To be fair, Christopher is young and lives with Asperger's Syndrome, so the format in which the book is written makes sense, but as someone who is not of the same age nor situation, following along with this was difficult to do.


By the time the ending came and it was revealed as to what actually happened, I sat there in disbelief and regretted ever picking this book up.

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