Author: Mark Haddon
Publisher: Random House (UK)
Genre: Middle-Grade; Family;
Rating: 4 and a half stars
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
Fifteen-year-old Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands math and science very well, but he can't understand other human beings. When he finds his neighbour's dog lying dead on the lawn, he decides to track down the killer and write a murder mystery about it. But his murder mystery leads to other mysteries and can he deals with the truth about his life?
When I started reading this book, I have no expectation. I knew this book is an award winning but I've been disappointed with some award winning books so it I decided that I will keep my mind open... thus I was blown away. The Curious Incident of The Dog in Night-Time is one of the best middle-grade book I've ever read. It was powerful, beautiful, and mind-blowing. It started with a seemingly simple thing, leads to many things. Christopher lived with his father and study in school for special need children. One day he found his neighbour's dog dead and decided that he would be a detective and solved the murder mystery. Despite his father banned him to be near the neighbour's house, Christopher continue his investigation but it lead to other mysteries and the secret that his father kept. It's like a snowball effect and I really like it.
Not only that, I think Mark Haddon is success in presenting Christopher without making him too in-human or too human. Christopher is a boy with special needs but instead of exploiting that to make us feel sorry for Christopher, Haddon makes us see Christopher as any other boy. Most of books about special need children constantly remind us how different they are for us, but not this book. Other characters are also interesting; although the story was written from Christopher's point of view, I have no problem to understand other characters and their personalities. Despite his lack of understanding about human being, Christopher is a very good observant and it helped a lot. Other thing I like the most is the ending, it's not happily-ever-after ending, but it's good-enough-for-now ending, which I think very suitable for this book and portrayed our life perfectly.
Lynossa
2 comments:
I adored this book, I thought the author got inside Christopher's head really well. Glad you also enjoyed it :)
@Sam, I really like it! It makes me want to read Haddon's other books :D
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