MEME: DAY 13

[jenni_blog]

day 01 → your favourite song
day 02 → your favourite movie
day 03 → your favourite television program
day 04 → your favourite book
day 05 → your favourite quote
day 06 → whatever tickles your fancy
day 07 → a photo that makes you happy
day 08 → a photo that makes you angry/sad
day 09 → a photo you took
day 10 → a photo of you taken over ten years ago
day 11 → a photo of you taken recently
day 12 → whatever tickles your fancy
day 13 → a fictional book
day 14 → a non-fictional book
day 15 → a fanfic
day 16 → a song that makes you cry (or nearly)
day 17 → an art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
day 18 → whatever tickles your fancy
day 19 → a talent of yours
day 20 → a hobby of yours
day 21 → a recipe
day 22 → a website
day 23 → a YouTube video
day 24 → whatever tickles your fancy
day 25 → your day, in great detail
day 26 → your week, in great detail
day 27 → this month, in great detail
day 28 → this year, in great detail
day 29 → hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
day 30 → whatever tickles your fancy



It is a remarkable, wonderfully absorbing novel that is both humourous and harrowing. This is a picture of the book cover. It is exactly the same as the cover of the book I read.



THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, by Mark Haddon, who has previously written and illustrated children's books. But this is a story for adults.

Below are two capsules of what the book is about. They both explain it very well without giving anything away.

Amazon.ca
Mark Haddon's bitterly funny first 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. Christopher John Francis Boone is a 15-year-old boy, 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 behaviour of his elders and peers.

Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbour'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 neighbours--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.

Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. --Jack Illingworth --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From Publishers Weekly
Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. Though Christopher insists, "This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them," the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. The result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Comments

[aglaiya.livejournal.com]

Don't stop to surprise me!

[just-jenni.livejournal.com]

LOL. This book was great!

[aglaiya.livejournal.com]

I guess you are only reading interesting stuff.