“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Novel
By Mark Haddon
2004
226 pages / 6 hours and 2 minutes
Fiction
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There are very few novels written after 2000 that have brought me greater joy than Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It has been made into a Broadway play, which I had the pleasure to see a few years ago in New York City. Not only was it technically amazing, but also the story was told so compellingly that an entire row of older patrons were crying as the play closed. The popularity of the play breathed new life into an already widely read book, yet there are bound to be several of you out there who missed the train on this one. So this is your prompt! Go read this book! It is short, it is funny, it is deeply moving, and unexpected things keep happening.
The narrator and hero of our story is 15 years old and has autism. He does not understand metaphors. He has trouble reading facial expressions. He is incapable of lying. But he is very bright and can do high level mathematics in his head. He cannot tolerate being hugged, so instead of embracing him, his parents will put out their hand and touch their fingers to his. There’s something about imagining them fingertip-to-fingertip that I find very moving.
Autism covers such a wide range of behaviors, but Christopher has a low range of emotional response and when he gets overwhelmed he holds his hands over his eyes or ears and groans and screams. He may not sound like a promising narrator. But Haddon has worked with autistic individuals, and Christopher turns out to be very good company for the reader.
The book is built around a mystery. Christopher has discovered his neighbor’s dog dead—skewered on a pitchfork. He sets out to solve this mystery and, in good Dr. Watson fashion, to provide us with an account of his detective work.
This will involve, among other things, a harrowing journey that is every bit as epic as Huck Finn’s journey down the Mississippi. Of course, Christopher gets it all wrong, but we learn a great deal about the messiness of his family life as he does.
While the book is moving, I do not find it sad or depressing. It is engaging and difficult not to read in one sitting.
For preachers I would say first that it’s just a great read. If you want to read an excellent piece of fiction that you’re going to want to pass on to your friends, this is the book.
But you also learn a great deal about voice. Preachers are given to telling stories, and sometimes you want to tell a story (perhaps a biblical one) with someone’s voice other than your own. That is, you want to tell it from a different point of view. You can actually learn a great deal from this book by watching how Haddon sees the world at least partially from this very different perspective. And the voice of the narrator will linger with you long after you’ve read the last page.
