the curious incident of dogs in the dark

[christina]

sorry guys, I know a lot of you like this book. it just seemed silly. i read it all the way through, hoping it would get better. it didn't. fortunately, it was short. and i never have to read it again. i think i gave my copy to someone, in fact. i never give away books!

[Kate]

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one. I thought having an autistic narrator was really interesting, though this also did come out suspiciously soon after Steve Martin's rather similar novel The Pleasure of My Company and my memory of some of the secondary characters and plot points might actually be from that. But I really enjoyed the narrator struggling with the emotional aspects of a mystery he can only understand logically.

[brook]

yes christina (it sounds so funny to call you that), you gave the copy to me! i think you saw it on my amazon.com wishlist and said something along the lines of please relieve me of my ownership of this thing. i did, but my reaction isn't much better.

[Jenny]

I read this book in a class called "the child in lit", and it was right after I'd read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I liked Extremely Loud, but I'm sort of in love with Jonathan Safran Foer, and I read his novels (all both!) through rose tinted glasses, you know?

But reading the two so close together gave each less of a shine, I guess, because the child narrator in Extremely Loud was super OCD and wrote in a very particularly childish OCD way, and the child narrator in the Incident of the Dog was autistic and wrote in a super childish autistic sort of way. The books felt less original in comparison (and I know I'm not doing a good job of explaining, but the narration style of the two kids were so similar), and I guess I resented the Incident of the Dog for that. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Jrobertus]

I can't agree with this as a loathsome book. I thougt it was a terrific novel - one of the best I've ever read. The protagonist is a 15 year old autistic boy who tries to solve a local mystery but finds way more than he sought. The narrative is constructed by a worker in the field, and is about as insightful a glimpse at autism as the average reader is likely to get. The story is riveting and makes us feel deep sympathy for the boy. I have spoken with a number of psychologists about the novel and they tend to agree this is about the most illuminating book around on the way the world appears to these afflicted people.

[Mike]

I have trouble finding this review to be useful when you got the title wrong... it wasn't the greatest book, but it was really good. The writing was very great not to mention well researched, the plot was interesting, and the characters were very well developed.

[Kate]

See I assumed she mistitled it on purpose, to illustrate the loathing. Like I did with Heartbreaking Work of Staggering BS.

[[deleted user]]

'you want to know who killed the dog? I did.'

I actually gasped out loud.