The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon.

"Sometimes when I want to be on my own I get into the airing cupboard in the bathroom and slide in beside the boiler and pull the door closed behind me and sit there and think for hours and it makes me feel very calm."

This is an extraordinary book about being special and cherishing differences in spite of the isolation felt. The title is taken from Arthur Conan Doyle's "Silver Blazes" and quoted by the maestro himself, Sherlock Holmes. In Haddon's novel the main character, Christopher, a 15 year old boy wants to be a mystery detective solving the murder of Wellington just like his idol Holmes.

As soon as you start reading it is obvious that Christopher is different and special. He has a photographic memory and thinks logically and literally. He demonstrates his thought patterns by adding illustrations, maps, diagrams and stories. This appealed to Haddon's younger audiences but the book has been very popular with adults. It won 17 literary prizes and was adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Marianne Elliott for the stage. In August 2012 it premiered at the National Theatre (London) before transferring to London's West End in March 2013. It was broadcast live to cinemas worldwide on the 6th September 2012.

It seems more than likely that Christopher suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and high-functioning autism. The author didn't want to simply present a manual on Asperger's but emphasize the differences in being an outsider like Christopher, isolated and yet one who is remarkably able as well as capable of seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way. He is absolutely brilliant at maths and sciences and has ambitions of being an astronaut or more realistically, a scientist. The latter is achievable. What he fails at is understanding people's emotions. "He can't read their faces. He can't put himself in their shoes."

He can understand literal meanings of everyday things that you and I take for granted but becomes frustrated and confused with metaphors and idioms. Fear usually develops. Siobhan, one of his teachers has advised him to ask people what they mean when he is confused by their emotions and if he doesn't receive a response that makes sense logically to him he is told to walk away. He cannot cope with people shouting especially at him and he will groan and scream more like a person having a fit or a person who is deranged. Christopher's behaviour can be violent and worrying. More animal than human.

He carries a Swiss army knife around all the time and this is his protective weapon against anyone who grabs him. Just like self-defence. Shockingly, he also keeps it there to protect himself from his father thinking that his father might murder him.

Siobhan is the one who encourages him to write a murder mystery novel and the story begins aptly with the murder of Wellington, Mrs Shears' poodle. When she sees Christopher carrying the dog she screams and this causes an adverse reaction with him. She contacts the police who ask too many questions flooding his mind. He lies face down on the ground, groaning:  "They were starting up on my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works." The policeman tried to lift him up from the grass and Christopher hit him. It was an instinctive reaction. Back to the self-defence.

It seems impossible to imagine a child who refuses the reassurance of touch such as hugging, especially from his parents who love him. Any attempt at touching him leads to violence. He was arrested but cautioned, then released. Fortunately his father arrived on the scene to sort it all out with the police.

He is obsessed with colours and cannot cope with items of food touching. He is obsessive in his focus on minutiae. Whatever detail the eye sees he describes as if it is important when in fact most of the time it is irrelevant. His quasi philosophizing on life, death and the after-life towards the end of the novel may help you to empathize with his tragic situation. He refers to his favourite dream which is morbid because it is about people dying on mass through catching a virus.
"Nearly everyone on the earth is dead, because they have caught a virus." In the second version cars crash and people drowned either by walking into the sea or jumping into rivers. "And eventually there is no one left in the world except people who don't look at other people's faces...Special people like me."

He craves isolation which makes the story extremely sad: "I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question." Freedom at a price. A heavy one. He is happy once he has reached the end. Strong elements of a dystopia which I find very disturbing.  

He lives with his father, Ed, a boiler engineer after the alleged death of his mother. Ed tries his best but there is conflict and frustration sometimes culminating in  fist-fights. He discovers that his mother and Mr Shears were very, very good friends and included this in his "novel." In Christopher's simplistic world this translates as "they were doing sex." His father read this and confiscated it. When Christopher was in the detective mode he went searching for his book and discovered a pile of unopened letters addressed to him. Frightening revelations from his father forced Christopher to run away from home, on a treacherous journey to London. His father had lied to him and he believed his father was capable of killing him. The impossible journey is a testament to his determination and it will succeed in giving you goosebumps especially in the London underground!

Fortunately you will be lifted from the doom and gloom and according to the BBC's literacy campaign for World Book day a survey undertaken in the UK showed that this book surprisingly was amongst the "Top 5 happy endings as voted by readers" in novels.
Paul Moorehead (Reviewer) commented: "He is a character you're rooting for, he's also the character in the story you understand the best." What does he achieve? More than we would have thought possible. Read it!

I have read that the film rights have been optioned by Brad Gray and Brad Pitt for Warner Brothers. There could be an interesting project here in the pipeline. Watch this space as they say......

WINNER OF 7 OLIVIER AWARDS! Winner of 20 Major Awards. 5 Tony awards. 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the National Theatre's highly acclaimed production based on Mark Haddon's award-winning novel transfers to the West End's Gielgud Theatre with performances starting 24th June 2014.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Marianne Elliott and was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike during its sell-out run at the National's Cottesloe Theatre.

Mike Noble and Jack Loxton star as Christopher Boone in Curious Incident, the fifteen year old maths genius with behavioural problems. They are joined byRakie Ayola, Trevor Fox, Amanda Drew, Gay Soper, Golda Rosheuvel, Daniel Casey, Paul Stocker, Jo Dockery and Patrick Driver

★★★★★ ‘A beautiful, eloquent, dazzlingly inventive

Publisher: David Fickling ISBN: 978-1-849-921763 Also Jonathan Cape.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

Copyright 2014. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this review article is reproduced.

Just found a controversial comment made by Ann Widdecombe, the former M.P. in The Mail on Sunday 23/8/15. When asked about the last play she went to, this was her curt really:
"The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time."
" a sensitive play ruined by a barrage of filthy language."