The book, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” was written by Mark Haddon. The book starts out with Christopher Boone explaining that on the night before his birthday he heard a noise outside. When he looked to see what it was, he saw his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, stabbed fatally with a garden fork. He decided to investigate and found out who killed Wellington which is when the book takes off. Mark Haddon was born in Northampton England in 1962 where he spent most of his childhood living in schoolhouses because both of his parents were teachers at boarding schools.
He went to Cambridge University where he studied English literature and won several awards for creative writing which led him to be able to write book reviews for various newspapers. He used to work as a bookseller until he began writing books himself, which is his current occupation. Mark Haddon has received five children’s book awards and won the Red House Children’s book award for “The Curious Incident” of the dog in the night-time novel in 2003. He also wrote another book called A Spot Of Bother about a family who struggles with their father’s mental illness, which went on to become an award-winning play that was released in 2009.
The book is written from Christopher Boone’s point of view in the first-person narrative which gives it its unique quality because most novels are written from the third-person omniscient viewpoint or limited omniscient viewpoints. The book is also written in the present tense which makes for an interesting read because all of the books seems to be happening at this very moment. The book has been mainly criticized by people who think that it talks down towards people who have autism or Asperger syndrome.
Many others, however, feel that it gives a very good and detailed explanation of what life would be like if you had autism and explained so well that autistics themselves were able to relate to it more than most books they had read before. Mark Haddon himself says he knows someone with Aspergers and used some of their characteristics into creating Christopher Boone’s character in order to help better portray autistic individuals. The book has won many book awards including the Red House Children book award in 2003.
It has also won several book awards for Mark Haddon’s work in general, notably the Whitbread book of the year award in 2004 which he shared with co-writer Lou Kuenzler who helped him write some parts of their book that were more accurate about life with an autistic child. Christopher Boone is fifteen years old and lives with his father, Ed Boone. His mother died when he was only four years old but he doesn’t remember her very well. Christopher takes after his father because they are both incredibly intelligent people who understand things on a different level than most other people do.
Christopher feels more comfortable around animals than he does around other people, which is why he understands them better than most other people. Christopher has many obsessions including prime numbers, book series like Sherlock Holmes and mystery novels like Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”. The book is written in first-person narrative from Christopher Boone’s point of view. This book isn’t really an autobiography but it is written about the author’s life experiences because Mark Haddon used his own son to help him write this book accurately.
This book takes place in Swindon, England where Mark Haddon once lived for two years while he worked at a psychiatric hospital with children who had autism spectrum disorders. During that time, he was able to gain a lot of insight into the minds of autistic children. Though Mark Haddon has never had an autistic child for a patient, he did have a son who was once misdiagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and because his son’s behavior was so similar to that which Christopher Boone demonstrates, it made writing this book much easier.
Christopher feels uncomfortable around other people except his father and grandmother, whom he loves dearly but they both understand him because they are also equally as intelligent as he is. Christopher also tends to get carried away with whatever idea enters his head at the time and obsesses over things like prime numbers or book series to avoid thinking about something else going on in his life that makes him feel uneasy.
For example, while investigating the scene of a crime his father had been called to, Christopher found an important clue and decided that he should keep it for himself because he didn’t want to share. He also has obsessive-compulsive disorder so he is constantly having to count things or do certain routines in a precise order. In addition, Christopher can get incredibly overwhelmed by large groups of people which makes going out into public very stressful.
On a hot night in Swindon, Christopher’s neighbor’s dog Wellington was killed with a garden fork and nobody knows who did it. Intrigued by this mystery that involved one of his interests (dogs), Christopher decides to investigate it on his own despite advice from both his father and the police to leave it alone. Christopher is determined to solve this case because he knows that there are things like book series for everything and if he’s able to solve this case then book he could earn enough money to buy all of the books in Agatha Christe’s book series.
This book was published by David Fickling Books but has since been republished by Vintage Anchor under their name. Mark Haddon made up some information about autism spectrum disorder (he didn’t know whether or not it was actually real) just so he could make Christopher Boone act more realistically for an autistic person rather than based on what Mark Haddon would do if he were autistic. Back in 2003, when this book was first published, it wasn’t very common for books to include autistic characters.
So Mark Haddon put aside everything he knew about autism spectrum disorder aside in order to make Christopher Boone act more realistically based on his son’s behavior rather than basing Christopher’s behavior off on what he would do if he were autistic. Mark Haddon has stated that there are several mysteries throughout The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime but none of them are actually important because the book isn’t really about solving any mystery at all. The book is mostly supposed to be a book about personal discovery and growth while also learning about the importance of communication between people despite their differences.
Mark Haddon also wrote this book for people who are autistic in order to make them feel less alone in the world even though Christopher is not actually autistic. Mark Haddon wrote this book because when he was younger, his brother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and Mark Haddon wanted to learn more about it. So Mark read all of the books that he could find on schizophrenia but realized that they were written by doctors or psychiatrists whose work dealt with issues specific to their jobs rather than normal people’s lives.
