I recently read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. This book offers the reader an interesting perspective of the world through the eyes of 15 year old Christopher John Francis Boone who appears to be eccentric to the point of fitting the description of having an autistic or apserger disorder. Seven minutes after midnight Christoper finds that his neighbor Mrs. Shears pet poodle Wellington is laying dead on her own front lawn. Christopher liked Wellington so he makes it a mission of his own to find out who killed Wellington because the police cannot seem to figure it out. Christopher begins to write his own book about his job as being a detective and starts to investigate Wellington's death by questioning his neighbors and finds out an interesting revelation about his mother from neighbor Mrs. Alexander in the process. Christopher is trying to find a place where he will be happy and safe, which leads him on a adventure all around England. Christopher begins to realize that he may not be quite as safe around his father who is hiding a couple of things from him. The book was interesting though out because I was never quite sure what happened to Wellington, Christopher's mother and even what was going to happen to Christopher's pet rat Toby. Christopher is a smart boy who is doing honors level math with the help of Mrs. Gascoyne, his invigilator Reverend Peters and his teacher Siobhan. He also plans on doing honors level physics and he has special talents because he can name the capitals and countries in the world and all the prime numbers up to the number seven thousand and fifty seven. He is an intelligent character for sure but there are certain traits that Christopher has that could lead you to believe that he suffers from an autistic and asperger type disorder. Some of the autistic symptoms are the fact that he does not like people touching him even if it is a police officer or his parents; he also was known to scream when he became frustrated; he thought of Toby the rat to be as important as just about anyone in his life; he lacked a fear of danger because he risked his life for Toby; and he also did not understand various verbal cues or expressions, such as the phrase you are the apple of my eye. He had asperger symptoms because he had a more then average interest in astronomy and puzzles; he talked a lot about math and had great skills in memorization and math. Christopher most likely had an autistic or asperger disorder because he has several of the symptomatic traits that real life autistic and asperger people tend to have.
I though that the different characters in the book were quite realistic. It also seemed to me that just about all the characters in the book were involved in some sort of a conflict or had a potentially realistic type of problem; such as Mr. Shears and Christopher's mothers relationship and even Christopher and his own father having a misunderstanding about Wellington and Christopher's mother. Christopher's parents seem to be realistic because they cared about him like most parents I think would care about there son even though they were having parenting issues. His father was also trying to keep him out of trouble by telling him not to play a detective game. His father would try and make up for when he got frustrated with Christopher by taking him to the zoo, so he was quite sympathetic as well. The ending was good because Christopher had the ability to be around his parents in an enviroment he could deal with. The characters all seemed realistic and the only character who seems to be a bit odd really is Christopher himself.
I really enjoyed this book because it allowed me to have a look into the unique mind of Christopher Boone who sees things a little differently then I expected him too because of his disorder, such as the fact that he believes because the number and color of certain cars he sees will determine how his day is going to turn out. The book had realistic characters and a story that was adventurous, exciting, full of danger, and the lesson of what it is like for an autistic teenage boy and his family going through serious issues in life.