With The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - A Book Review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon tells the story of Christopher, a fifteen year old with Asperger's syndrome as he tries to solve the murder of his neighbor's dog. This book is truly unlike any other book I've read. It gives us a glimpse of the mentality of a person with personality detachment disorder and has to be one of my favorite books ever.

The beautiful thing about it is that it doesn't victimize the parents. It doesn't even make us feel bad for the kid. It just shows us that he is living his own little life. And not in a sappy way either. He's happy about the way he is, and he can't imagine living any other way.

I learned so much from Mark, and I fell in love with him with every paragraph I read. But perhaps the most inspiring thing about this story is the social element of it; Mark's fascinatingly unbiased view on how the rest of the world treats him. It is obvious that his parents, like many in their situation, are utterly untrained to deal with Mark and, as cliche as it sounds, they "just don't get him". But Mark doesn't see that, his innocence and naivete make him truly a remarkable character, one we can all learn from.

Truth is, we probably can never find out whether or not this is what actually goes through the mind of someone with Asperger's, but it sure is a good theory.

The book is incredibly short, and the language, as expected is extremely simple. so I recommend it to everyone. I don't see how anyone, avid reader or not, could ever regret reading it. 

With Behind the Scenes at the Museum - A Book Review

This is Kate Atkinson's first novel, but its the second of hers that I've read. A few years ago I read Started Early, Took The Dog, and it was okay. Now that I've read behind the scenes, I'm thinking of re-reading Started Early, Took The Dog to look for plot twists I hadn't noticed before.

This is the first book I read after a dry-spill infested with exams and tests and assignments, and just plain laziness, so naturally I dived in full force. However, I found myself unable to continue the book a third of the way through. Up until that point the book had been slightly too "Little Women" for my taste. You see, the book tells the story of Ruby Lennox, and her maternal ancestors up to her great great grandmother. And it gets confusing. But I plowed through, because I thought it would be rude of me to not give it a chance.

Besides the over-whelming number of names and characters, or possibly because of them, the book starts slightly slow. But the slight turns of phrase soon got more and more interesting and it became obvious that there are further depths to this story that I hadn't seen.

You see, this story is narrated by Ruby Lennox, and one of the most interesting twists is that she actually has a twin sister who died when they were four. She has no recollection of this sister, but hints of her are subtly included, like how Ruby notices that there are double as many photos of her than there are of any other sibling. So I have to give Atkinson this, the book is cleverly written. The plot may not be the most engaging, but the writing sure is.

If there was one theme to this book it would be misery. Every character is unhappy. And it really got me down. It made me realize how easy it is for life to turn south, and it creeps me out. So, dear reader, please appreciate your life and remember that it could be substantially worse.

All-in all I wouldn't exactly recommend this book to anyone, unless they have nothing else to read. And I don't think I would be re-reading it anytime soon.