Product Description

Christopher is 15 and lives in Swindon with his father. He has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. He is obsessed with maths, science and Sherlock Holmes but finds it hard to understand other people. When he discovers a dead dog on a neighbour's lawn he decides to solve the mystery and write a detective thriller about it. As in all good detective stories, however, the more he unearths, the deeper the mystery gets - for both Christopher and the rest of his family.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16030 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 279 pages

Customer Reviews

"My memory is like a film. I press Rewind and Fast Forward."
Writing this first novel from the point of view of an autistic 15-year-old, Mark Haddon takes the reader into the chaos of autism and creates a character of such empathy that many readers will begin to feel for the first time what it is like to live a life in which there are no filters to eliminate or order the millions of pieces of information that come to us through our senses every instant of the day. For the autistic person, most stimuli register with equal impact, and Christopher's teacher Siobhan, at the special school he attends, has been trying to teach him to deal with the confusing outside world more effectively. At fifteen he is on the verge of gaining some tenuous control over the mass of stimuli which often sidetrack him.

When the dog across the street is stabbed and dies, Christopher decides to solve the mystery and write a book about it. His favorite novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, becomes his model as he investigates the crime, uncovering many secrets involving his own family in the process. Innocent and honest, he sees things logically and interprets the spoken word literally, unable to recognize the clues which would tell him if someone is being dishonest, devious, or even facetious. As he tells his story in a simple subject-verb-object sentence pattern, Christopher tries to communicate and give order to his world, and the reader can easily see how desperate he is to find some pattern which will enable him to make sense of it.

Christopher's investigations eventually require him to make some remarkably brave decisions, and when he faces his fears and moves beyond his immediate neighborhood, the magnitude of this challenge is both dramatic and poignant. Strange places have always been traumatic for him, and he has difficulties with his emotions. "Feelings," he says, "are just having a picture on the screen in your head." He responds either with logic or with the anger which sometimes overwhelms him as result of fear or frustration, and the reader cannot help aching for him and empathizing with his family.

Christopher's coming-of-age story is most unusual, if not unique, and he ends the book a much more mature 15-year-old than he was when he started. With warmth and humor, Haddon creates a fascinating main character, allowing the reader to share in his world and experience his ups and downs, his trials and successes. In providing a vivid world in which the reader participates vicariously, Haddon fulfills the most important requirements of fiction, entertaining at the same time that he broadens the reader's perspective and allows him to gain knowledge. Mary Whipple

A wonderfully funny and poignant read
In the second chapter of this book (actually labelled as "3" because this is the second prime number), we are introduced to Christopher, the narrator, who is writing a mystery novel as a class project. Christopher is an extremely intelligent 15-year old who just happens to be autistic. He begins his tale by relating his discovery of a neighbor's dog, which had been murdered with a garden fork. Because he likes both dogs and mysteries, Christopher sets off to find the killer, but what starts as a story about a dog becomes a story about Christopher's life. Not only do we learn about Christopher's many quirks, but also we learn the explanations for his seemingly irrational behavior, making it seem almost logical. The book is surprising funny, as Christopher, with his limited emotional range, makes the perfect straight man. As a psychologist, I found that the depiction of Christopher rang true, and overall, I found this novel to be a delightful, different, and quick little read.

A narrow focus on a broad subject but very well done
The book portrays the point of view of a 15-year-old autistic boy, Christopher. It did it so well that I was tempted to rate the book lower just based on that because it was implied it's viewpoint was so accurate. It leaves you feeling that you might just understand what autism really is and does it so well that it implies that the specific range of emotion that Christopher has and how he deals with it is what it is all about. My own experiences suggest that this boy's emotional range and response is just one vantage point.

In some cases the incidents that take place in the search for the dog are funny. At the same time the focus on emotion and feelings are so well done that, rather than funny, it might be said that it is chilling.

It took a long time for me to be willing to recommend this book to those in my life who are closer to autism. The book, if anything, is too powerful in getting a message across that is a hard message. No one would want to think that someone they loved really had to spend their life dealing with emotion in this way. On the other hand the more you read the more you want to read. The book was one I read from beginning to end in one sitting.

The author did a great job of using the story to teach us but what he taught us may have narrowed our previous points of view more than it expanded them.