Book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

I joined a book group! Yippee!! I just love reading and have always wanted to join a book group. There is a group of women at my church who have been reading books together for a long time, and now that I'm not in class 3 nights a week, I decided to try it out. They have been so wonderfully welcoming, and I am getting to read books that I would not have picked on my own.

The first book I read with them was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. From the review on amazon.com:

Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.

Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbors--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I actually really liked this book! The author did such a good job of telling the story from the perspective of the main character, that I learned a lot, and it made me think - always a good thing. Also, it's not a terribly long book, and was fairly easy reading. If you read this book, don't overlook the footnotes, the often contain little gems of humor that add to the story.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

--

Originally posted at: http://rebeccasmiscellanies.blogspot.com/