the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

So I just finished reading a book called “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” and I really liked it. It’s about this “special needs” boy who is 15 years old and who lives with his father and pet rat Toby. One night he goes out into his neighborhood and finds his neighbor’s dog Wellington dead on the lawn. He has been stabbed through the torso by a gardening fork. That incident leads him to write a murder mystery novel on how he finds out who kills the dog. But he finds out pretty early on and the rest of the book is this intense string of run on sentences about how he finds his mother (who he thought was dead) and becomes more confident and actually corrects his life, which he didn’t even know was incorrect.

This novel was especially well done because it was from a perspective that I have never read before. It was first person narrative- seen through the eyes of a (probably autistic) 15 year old boy. You feel for him as you read his journey. You want to help him through things as he braves crouded subway stations (he’s desperately claustrophobic and hates to be touched). You worry he will get into trouble because he doesn’t know how to interact with other people properly.

He teaches you a new way of looking at the world, but it’s really a way that you have already known. It’s the child’s perspective with a smarter, more sophisticated edge. It’s taking all of the big things that happen in life and making them small and instead emphasizing the little things. The little achievements are the real prize because they happen everyday and that makes them special.

Read this book.