book reviews , different studio guests each week. Join us every Thursday between 12 and 1pm on Radio Scilly 107.9fm or log on to radioscilly.com.

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Thursday 11 April 2013

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



 review by showhost
Winner of the Whitbread book of the year/Guardians Firction prize/South Bank Show awards.
It’s another of those books written for young adults but enjoyed by us older adults too, like ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, Harry Potter etc.
I saw this book in the charity shop and had to read it to satisfy my curiosity as I had read so much about it.
It’s about a boy, christopher, who is 15 years, 3 months & 2 days old and has Aspergers Syndrome.  He lives with his father in Swindon, his mother is dead.
Christopher discovers their neighbours dog, one night,  impaled on their lawn, with a garden fork.  The neighbour comes out and finds Christopher over the body of the dog and assumes that he has killed it.  The police are called and he is taken to the station after hitting the policeman who touched him.
Christopher hadn’t committed the crime but he decided to investigate the murder and write a book about it but he uncovers things he never expected to find.
The book is written from the perspective of Christopher, who can’t tell lies, doesn’t understand jokes, hates to be around strangers and crowds, hates changes and definitely hates being touched – so much it can make him lash out.  He is however, extremely bright especially at maths & science, which is why he is going to take his maths A level and why the book has lots of scientific formulae & equations (which, towards the end, I skipped through quite happily).
It is an interesting insight into the mind of someone with Aspergers (I once worked with an autistic child and a lot of the traits with Christopher were there with that child too).

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