Okay, so I lied. I never put this book in the original “On my Bedstand” post, and I still haven’t finished the three new books I mentioned. In my experience, new reading comes in waves — when it rains, it pours. So, when I got three new books to read one day, of course the next day I got one more: “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” by Mark Haddon. Of course I was skeptical at first — here I had Mailer and Cormac McCarthy on my bookshelf — how could this…Mark Haddon possibly compare to those greats? Note:It’s pretty terrible that I thought that, considering I would like to “be a writer” one day and yet I’ll never, ever, compare to those greats. Let me also note that I dislike so outwardly and openly reviewing books, because … who am I to review this book, or any other book? If I were to have a conversation with someone about the book, I would not mind voicing my opinion, but once it is written down it becomes a “review,” so consider this post a conversation starter and nothing else. I’ll save the suspense — the book wasn’t great, it didn’t blow my mind, but it came pretty close. There were moments in the book when I thought it could be brilliant, when I thought, “here we go, this is it.” But the book never quite reached “it.”
As the story goes…Christopher John Francis Boone is an eccentric, intelligent, thoughtful and observant autistic child. He is fifteen years old, a math genius, but socially inept. He eats red foods, but not yellow or brown (those are bad colors), and some of his behavior is equal to that of a young child. But he is perceptive, curious & questioning. When his neighbors dog is murdered, after being accused of the murder himself, Christopher begins his own investigation. The clues only lead Christopher to his fathers deceptions and triggers a fear in Christopher that sends him on a most difficult trip to London.
The book (as any book is supposed to) goes beyond its plot, and as Christopher tells the story to us (as he is the one supposedly writing it), he delves deeper and deeper into a kind of philosophical thinking — he writes about God, evolution, mathematics, time and space, and he doesn’t just share his own opinions, he uses a kind of thinking that is thorough, logical (mostly), and organized. And from my viewpoint, that of a struggling writer, I commend Haddon’s control of his character, the control in his writing. The character, and character development is right on. Christopher’s story and trains of thought are an astounding combination of complete misunderstandings of the simplest tasks or events and a full appreciation of the complex, the abstract.
Read on:
“People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel, or the human eye, or a brain could happen by chance. but … if they thought logically they would see that they only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist.”
He continues…
“And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice. And it is like if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn’t be because there would be millions of people who didn’t get 5,698 heads.”
The first sentence is actually pretty compelling to me, and alludes to the common perceptions of life and death and of our own importance — the importance of our own individual existence.
“…And people who believe in God think God has put humans beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.”
I don’t know that this is necessarily the best excerpt from the book, or the most compelling, but I consider it representative of the line of thinking that Christopher follows throughout the end of the book. Before he reaches some of these more complex ideas, the book acts more as an introduction, a time to get used to seeing and understanding the world from Christophers point of view. Each person, each item, each action taking place in the same room as Christopher is understood by his brain almost in the same way as a computer, and if there are too many people, too many conversations, or too much going on, his brain goes on a kind of overload.
I have to end this post, but really I could continue writing for pages.
Final thoughts: I recommend this book. It may not have reached its full potential, but it is a great read, a fast read, and leaves you thinking. What more can you really ask?
I’m beginning a new “category” of blog posts — something I plan to write weekly, or monthly, depending on the circumstances. It is called, “On my Bedstand,” and it’s essentially a list of what I am reading — the books I have on my bedstand – and when I finish reading something I’ll post a review. Right now, I have three books that I am currently reading, one that I plan to read, and one that I just cannot stop re-reading. Here they are (in that order):The Best American NonRequired Reading, 2005
The Castle in the Forest, by Norman Mailer
Hadrian’s Wall, by William Dietrich
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
Stay tuned…
