Pages: 226, including appendix
Language: English
Nationality: English
First published: 2003

“As a young man, Mark Haddon worked with autistic individuals” it says as part of a little author-introduction before the actual text begins. Having read the book, I can’t possibly find myself doubting this statement.

Written from Christopher John Francis Boone’s perspective, in first person, he (Christopher) narrates how he finds his neighbour’s dog dead and wants to find out who did it. He likes animals and relates to their emotions well, whereas he can’t grasp human emotions, which is part of his wish to discover the canine murderer. There are several more things he doesn’t like, and where many people behave “normally” he has a specific preference; one type of food cannot touch another on his plate; yellow food must be coloured red before being consumed, as he detests yellow and so forth. Take all these complications, add a proletarian background and family with respective problems, a pleasant teacher and a lot of Christopher’s perspective on the world, and you have a crude approximation to the actual book.

Christopher is craving to be around. Not only is he portrayed this way in the book, Haddon has very aptly made it craving for the reader too. He hasn’t done this through cryptic language or the like, however, as that clearly would have defied the whole perspective of the book, namely that of Christopher. To exemplify; upon his father finding him in his room just after having discovered that his mum in fact isn’t dead:

“Then he said, “You read the letters.”
Then I could hear that he was crying because his breath sounded all bubbly and wet, like it does when someone has a cold and they have lots of snot in their nose.”

As stated earlier, Christopher has little or no understanding of human emotions, which is evident from this extract. When he sees his father crying, he perhaps knows it’s bad, but doesn’t understand that he is supposed to feel sad too, which all amounts to him being hard to handle for the reader as well, as it is simply quite aggravating to see such a display of complete ignorance.

Without knowing a lot about autism myself, I find this book rather enlightening. It very cleverly portrays the problems entailing an autistic child, and the immense wear raising such a child exerts on the family and people around him. In other words it’s not only Christopher’s story that’s touching, but his parents’ too, how they struggle, and how we would most probably struggle in the same situation. Speaking for myself at least, it is very strong how Christopher doesn’t understand that his parents love him to the same extent that someone else would, and how he renounces his father completely just because his father killed a dog, even after he explains why he did it; an explanation I would easily have been happy with.

The book is not written very complicatedly. It is in fact quite simple, the language plain and the structure uniform. It is a joy to read, and easy, as aforementioned; which is why I read it the same day I bought it. The language being as said contributes to the portrayal of Christopher’s simple but meaningful observations of his surroundings and to provide a feeling for just what happens inside his head. An example of this language would be the immanent usage of “then.” Starting paragraphs with “Then this and this” and also every time someone says something “Then he said:” is very useful in showing how Christopher is dependent on systems and such, and doesn’t really think very differently of the world; rather he categorises the events and list them systematically. This contributes to that same feeling Erlend Loe, my preferred Norwegian author, invokes with the protagonist of Naiv.Super. (Naïve.Super. in English).

I can safely suggest this book as a good book to read; however I would suggest to take it in smaller portions than the whole at once. At least I found this to be a bit tiring, and I found myself getting aggravated by Christopher in the end, because of his different schemes and ways. It is easy reading, very easy indeed, and being captivating as described above, I found it hard to put down. With this said I must also add that I found it simply quite enjoyable to read, and do believe all people with some sort of heart will also be moved by Christopher’s story.