Author’s Note: This post containers spoiler information about Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Go ahead and take the 70 seconds to read my review, and save yourself the four to six hours that you could never get back if you waste your time on this book. Book Club Moms, here are my comments for May’s selection. I find that when I don’t like a book the meeting goes to hell quickly, so in hopes of keeping us on track, I will rant here and bring only my most positive energy to the meeting if I am able to attend. The kids’ babysitter will not return my emails or phone calls, so it isn’t looking good. Could it be because my pre-schooler tried to kill her with a jar of peanut butter? Possibly.
If I had to write a one sentence description of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it would be: Rain Man meets the Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.
Yes, that is harsh, but I will not stop there. It shocks me that this sham of a novel won the 2003 Whitbread Award and received stellar reviews. Haddon has garnered overwhelming praise for creating Christopher Boone, a fifteen-year-old boy with Asperger Syndrome (a highly functional type of autism), who is an emotionally impaired teenager who navigates through a murky world of sadness, ambivalence, anger and tragedy. The book centers on the mystery of who killed Mrs. Sheers’ dog, Wellington, with a garden fork. The deeper that the dispassionate, reasonable boy delves into the mystery the more duplicity he uncovers. The tension between the literal-minded teenager who is incapable of lying and the world of deception and misconception created by the adults around him is fascinating for about two and half chapters until the gimmicky charts and drawings start appearing to show how Christopher’s mind processes.
Every time Haddon wants to pad the plot he shows Christopher working on some long equation or making lists that have no relevance to the story but only serves to elucidate Christopher as different. It’s not character development. It is filler just like when I loaded my critical theory essays in graduate school with a bunch of Derrida and Foucault quotes. I was not trying to make an argument; I was just trying to meet the page requirements. Same thing with Haddon.
Shame on Haddon, who is not autistic, for using Asperger’s as a narrative device. Shame on most critics for not seeing this novel for the gimmick that it is. Perhaps, it is politically incorrect to criticize a book about a disability, which is precisely why I do not read books about cancer or sexual abuse either. The subject matter is too tragic for readers and critics to see objectively (through their tear-filled eyes) the other components that make a narrative strong or weak. Most readers can’t get over their own guilt about their personal happiness long enough to see these types of novels as sympathy-inducing contrivances. (Feel free to put Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl, and A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks into this category).
In theory, Haddon’s book would be sympathy-inducing if it was not so grating on the nerves. If you removed all of Christopher’s commentary about not wanting to be touched, his breakdowns when his routine is interrupted, and his extensive rambling about math, this 226 page novel would become an 80 page novella or just a really long short story about a murdered dog and a divorce. Without the Asperger’s angle, Haddon’s book becomes another divorce novel among a competitive array of divorce dramas available for adults and teens. If you are looking for a divorce novel, try out Judy Blume’s It's Not the End of the World or Diane Johnson’s Le Divorce (the book, not the dreadful movie adaptation). If you are desperate for an autism novel, try Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, which has been highly recommended by two trusted librarians. Supposedly, the character development is more substantial, and it is an all-around superior book.
And, aren’t we all just looking for superior books (well, those of us who are not Stephenie Meyer fans)? When it comes down to it, life is too short to read bad books, so expand your literary life by skipping this book. Or, if you already read it for book club, go bitch about for 20 minutes and then move onto more interesting topics.
