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A review by sleepey
The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time by Mark Haddon
1.5
There's some debate, fuelled by comments from the author, over whether this book is actually trying to depict autism, or if it's just providing an autism-ish "outsider" lens as an interesting way to view a mystery. But to be frank, it doesn't matter which is true.
As autism rep it seems pretty terrible, taking all sorts of outdated & stereotypical notions for granted. The protagonist is arbitrary, he's violent, he has no theory of mind, and so on. No autistic person I know is like this; many who have read it were quite insulted, & frustrated that so many people read this & think it's really what's going on inside their heads.
If you take the author at his word though and divorce it all from reality, that still only gets you halfway through the book. It's charming enough to begin with, letting Christopher walk you through his thought processes while picking up hints of what he's missing from the lives of the people around him. But then the mystery plot completely collapses (someone just tells him who did it out of the blue ) & the story becomes all about Christopher & his condition - the specific ways he struggles with things & the strain it puts on his family. Which, if it's just supposed to be some non-specific fantasy disorder... who cares? What are we to gain from such a deep dive into a made-up problem?
Overall this is a miserable, cynical, half-arsed book with a flimsy story & a grim ending, all at the expense of a marginalised group. And they teach it in schools.
As autism rep it seems pretty terrible, taking all sorts of outdated & stereotypical notions for granted. The protagonist is arbitrary, he's violent, he has no theory of mind, and so on. No autistic person I know is like this; many who have read it were quite insulted, & frustrated that so many people read this & think it's really what's going on inside their heads.
If you take the author at his word though and divorce it all from reality, that still only gets you halfway through the book. It's charming enough to begin with, letting Christopher walk you through his thought processes while picking up hints of what he's missing from the lives of the people around him. But then the mystery plot completely collapses (
Overall this is a miserable, cynical, half-arsed book with a flimsy story & a grim ending, all at the expense of a marginalised group. And they teach it in schools.