Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

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

Author:  Mark Haddon

Publication Information: Vintage (2011)

This book is about Christopher, a teenager that struggles with Aspergers, accounting his life through family problems and the incident of his neighbours dog being murdered with a garden fork.

Overall I think that the plot was quite interesting, especially at the beginning with the mystery itself because I thought that it was interesting to see the logic behind Christopher's ideas and actions. However, I found the middle of this novel dragged quite a lot and lost it's way a bit, yet the ending got better. I really liked the mystery element at the beginning of this story and the way that the protagonist talks about other people such as Siobhan.

I really liked the character of Christopher as I think it gave the reader a clear insight into how he was thinking and his own rationale to what he was doing at certain points in the plot. Although I don't usually like books that contain swearing, I think that in this novel it could be seen as relevant as it is not overly used and is used at points of high tension in the plot. 

The writing was good; easy to read and well paced, apart from in the middle where, as I said before, it seemed to drag, however I thought that at some points, I got distracted from the plot by Christopher's explanations of science or maths. I think that it was interesting to include this information but it felt like it was breaking up the story too much for me. I liked that it was quite a quick read; the book has 268 and it only took me a few hours to get through as it was very engaging.

All in all, I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars as there were some bits that I disliked and I felt like some of the characters needed to be developed further.

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