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Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Add comment June 30th, 2005 at 05:08pm 1,665 views

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a book about a 15 year old autistic boy named Christopher. He is a genius at math, but he has trouble with social skills and fitting into the world. The book was written by Mark Haddon, a non-autistic man who used to work with autistic people.

I found it quite amazing that a non-autistic person could describe the experience of being autistic so well and in such detail. I especially liked the descriptions of how Christopher’s thought processes worked. There is one scene where Christopher is in a train station, and the author perfectly describes the confusion, panic, and overstimulation that is common among many autistic people.

In the story, Christopher is writing a murder mystery novel about his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, who he found in her backyard impaled on a pitchfork. While trying to uncover the mystery of who killed Wellington, Christopher faces many challenges in trying to overcome social awkwardness, deal with high stress situations, uncover family mysteries, and take his A-levels in maths.

It is a bittersweet story, and an excellent one. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, autistic or otherwise.

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Filed under: Autism / Asperger's

Tags: autism