The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.
--Francoise Sagan

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon



Taking a break from the short story collection...I found this book at the Scholastic Book Fair at school today, and I remembered my sister talking about how good it was. I snatched it up and spent the day reading happily alongside my students.

I LOVE the protagonist in this story! Christopher is 15 years old. He's autistic. He loves prime numbers, the color red, outer space, and Sherlock Holmes. He detests yellow and brown, pointless chatting, metaphors, and being hugged. He has a pet rat named Toby. He wants to be an astronaut. He refuses to eat if his food touches on the plate. He's completely three-deminsional.

Christopher goes out walking late one night and finds his neighbor's dog murdered. Its been stabbed with a gardening fork. Christopher is initially accused of having done it, punches a police officer, winds up in jail...upon his release, he vows to find out who the real killer is and begins to do some dective work of his own.

I'm about 70 pages in...and already, the investigation has led to some surprising (and pretty ugly) truths about Christopher's own family. I can't wait for all of it to unravel. Wondering how he's going to cope.

This is just the kind of book I've been craving...one that's un-put-down-able.

1 comment:

  1. This sounds really good- can't wait to hear your final verdict on it!

    ReplyDelete