Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Mark Haddon)

by Tristan D.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon has been the focus of quite a bit of praise from critics and readers, so I had been looking forward to reading it for book discussion at the library. However, I thought the book fell far short of the reviews--definitely one of the more overrated books that I've read.

The book is unique, I’ll give it that. Haddon’s narrator is Christopher Boone, a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, who sets out to find the murderer of a neighbor’s poodle, though this turns out to be entirely insignificant and quickly resolved, soon overshadowed by the dramas of Christopher's parents. Seeing the story through his eyes is interesting from a psychological standpoint, but—and this is a big but—he never really clicks as a character. It too often seems like Haddon shoves Christopher at us and says, “Pity him. He’s not like you.” And maybe we do pity him—but we never understand him, and we certainly never empathize with him. He remains distant and cold, and never really develops or grows as a character. I’ve always felt that no matter who the character is, and no matter how bizarre and incomprehensible his circumstances, it’s the author’s central duty to the reader to make us understand him. We need a connection, any connection, and Curious Incident only succeeds in widening the gap.