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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