The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was published in 2003 and was written by Mark Haddon. The novel centers around Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic boy who finds that his neighbour’s dog has been murdered and sets out to find the killer. Have you read this book? If you haven’t, would you?
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I wouldn’t actively search it out, but if someone handed it to me with that description I’d definitely read it
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My grandma saw the play.
this book and i go a long way back haha
my father gave it to me as a gift when i was seven, said it was recommended for people “like me”
i couldn’t read it back then, knowing there was a dead animal made me far too upset to read it properly
also thinking back, it was definitely NOT for a seven year old child bc well, it’s a lil heavier than what a child that age can handle, probably
i read it properly when i was 14? 15? and hooooo boy
Christopher is… stereotypically autistic, not gonna lie
beginning with the fact that he’s a cis white boy (meaning he’s more accessible to a proper diagnosis (yes, i’m salty about the bias))
and he feels like… if you asked someone to describe how they think an autistic boy would behave? that’d fit Christopher to the t
but still, i related to him in a lot of aspects
he’s nerdy and has similar interests to me (maths and numbers (see: his liking for prime numbers and using mathematical and logical diagrams throughout the entire book), Doctor Who (the reference to Daleks he made at one point), animals (his interest in the dog from the title and his pet rat) and so on)
his “quirks” are similar to mine, too (not liking some colours and not eating food with that colour or liking to hide in small spaces when he’s overwhelmed, for example)
and his thought process and difficulty understanding people are similar too (even now at 21, i think of his diagram with the different expressions and i can’t understand what they’re supposed to mean, and i think back to it whenever people are making weird expressions or, in online conversations, use emotes (yes, i have difficulty understanding what most emotes are supposed to mean))
also, Christopher’s musings on a lot of things have stuck with me
particularly when he talks about constellations and how Orion can be a dinosaur
and how it’s all terribly subjective and doesn’t exactly make sense
(that helped solidify Orion as my fave constellation)
i think about that often, and it makes me feel more free
because just because i connect dots differently, it doesn’t mean i’m in the wrong
because of these, the book has a special place in my heart
however, if any autistic person is planning to read it, i must warn you: it’s not the best representation for us out there, it falls into stereotyping sometimes, and it can put Christopher’s autism in a bigger protagonist role than Christopher as a character sometimes
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I don’t mind stereotypes. Honestly, I’m a stereotypical Aspie, lol.
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understandable
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That’s why autism is a spectrum. :)
Yep, so not everyone’s experience will be the same and why some people will mind stereotypes
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*nods* exactly
(thanks, fra, you put my thoughts into words better than i could)
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YES! Honestly, I don’t mind the puzzle piece logo, because I understand that we can be hard to figure out. I hate Autism Speaks, though.
I don’t think I’ve heard of this book…
It sounds sweet… but also kinda dumb…
I don’t think I would read this. Seems cool but I’m not into mystery.
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Why? He’s just trying to solve a murder.
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Why tho? Does he even know the neighbours or the dog?
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I’m not sure. I need to read it. I’m a little biased, lol.
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Oki. Tell me if it was good.
God, I need to read this. So much has happened.
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