Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

[livingdeb]

First let me say that there is no chapter one. So if you get the book and notice that it starts with chapter 2, then even if the previous page is torn out, I can assure you that that is really the beginning of the book. (As the previous page is merely a third title page, at least in my edition, it wouldn't be missed.)

As I said yesterday I quite liked the first few pages. They were interesting and well-written.

Before long, it looked like one of those books where you can learn things from a character who doesn't actually know them himself. He knows enough for you to figure it out, but there's some reason that he doesn't. I think that's fun.

And it became clear that the protagonist has one of those serious mental conditions where it is very difficult to imagine what it must be like, but since the story is told in the first person, you get to have a clue. I also think that's fun.

Then one-quarter of the way through the book, I figured out something that made me dislike the main character, the same way I suddenly disliked the main character in "Memento" in the scene near the end where he deliberately lies to himself, knowing that it will quite likely lead to the murder of a man he doesn't like.

Ten pages later, a new fact was revealed which confirmed my horrible guess.

I began to get uncomfortable with some ways that the main character is like me, only even more extreme. For example, I am overly rational, which I like, but Christopher goes too far in the same way my old friend M did. Whenever I was around M too much, I would become even more extreme than I normally am, and this would make it quite difficult to tolerate people of even average intelligence, let alone those of below-average intelligence. And since the world is full of people like that, this is a recipe for unhappiness.

For another example, I have very little common sense and thus use rationality as a crutch. Christopher has no common sense at all and has only rationality to get him through.

Then halfway through the book I learned that I was wrong about the thing I thought I had figured out. Wrong in every way except for the hint I'd read later. Or was that "hint" a red herring? I still didn't like Christopher, though, because I was still afraid of him.

Then we got to the character development part, the kind where necessity is the mother of invention. I always wish people could improve even when they don't absolutely have to in order to survive. And they can, of course; it's just not as likely. I'm a fan of character development, so I decided that would be fun.

But by the end of the book, it made me tired just knowing that there are people like him in the world. I am supposed to sympathize with Christopher, but I identify with his parents more. To me this book is one more answer to the question of why I don't want kids. I could never be as good a parent as Christopher needs. Or at least I wouldn't want to.

In conclusion, this is a well-written interesting book that's a quick read, but I don't like it because I don't like the main character and because it makes me feel uncomfortable about some of my own traits.

Reading this book I also learned a bit more about metaphors. For some reason I had always thought they were just like similes except that you use the word "is" instead of the phrase "is like." But really, Christopher describes it as a whole different animal. I still prefer similes, just like Christopher does. Ugh.

Comments

[sallini.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the additional comments. Interesting stuff.