Spotlight Magazines Spotlight on West Bridgford, Nottingham June 2015 | Page 16

Spotlight Magazine

A Good Read

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time by Mark Haddon
Wellington is dead.
He was killed with a
fork. That’s not quite so
odd though. It was a
garden fork.

Discovering the body
of his neighbour’s dog,
15 year old Christopher
is determined to find
out what happens so he decides to do
some ‘detecting’. What he discovers will
tell him so much more than just who killed
Wellington.
As a reader you see the world through
Christopher’s eyes. A world where maths
is in charge and helps to make sense of
everything. A world where seeing five
red cars in a row is a sign of a ‘super
good day.’ Christopher has Asperger’s
Syndrome: a form of high functioning
autism. This means that he doesn’t see
things the same as others do.
Facial expressions are difficult to decode
– his teacher gives him clues to help him
– and metaphors are just confusing and
don’t really help you to understand things
because you have to spend so much time
trying to work out what it means.
This highly acclaimed novel is an insight
into a world inhabited by many people, but
alien to most of the population. Haddon
also brings out the difficulties of raising a
child with Asperger’s. His widowed father
tries to be patient but struggles with the
lack of emotion from his son.