The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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Summary

Just after midnight, fifteen year old Christopher Boone is looking at a dead dog in a garden opposite his house. The dog has been killed with a garden fork. When the dog's owner sees Christopher holding the dog, she screams at him and calls the police. The police arrive and one of them attempts to lift Christopher up. Christopher doesn't like being touched so he hits the policeman and finds himself down at the station being cautioned.

The following day Christopher sets about investigating who killed the dog despite his father's warning not to interfere in other people's business. But Christopher's enquiries lead to him uncovering secrets about his own family, and his dead mother in particular. When he feels that he too is in danger, he is forced to confront some of his biggest fears and make the most hazardous journey of his life - going by train to London on his own. For most teenage boys this would be an adventure at best, but Christopher is no ordinary teenager. He has some very special abilities - he's brilliant at mathematics with a particular fondness for prime numbers - but he also has significant difficulties in relating to other people and coping with change, because Christopher has a behavioural disorder.

Background

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is Mark Haddon's first book for older readers and was published simultaneously in two imprints. The edition from David Fickling Books is for 'young adults' (which, in the publishing world, seems to mean teenagers) and the edition from Jonathan Cape is pitched at adults. The book has been an enormous success which took Haddon rather by surprise. It won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for 2003 - only the second time the winner of the children's category has gone on to win the overall prize (the first being Philip Pullman in 2001).

Mark Haddon has worked with children and adults with a range of mental and physical disabilities, and so writes both insightfully and sensitively about Christopher's disability. In the book Haddon never gives Christopher's problems a label - he is simply Christopher and is very special. The dustcover, however, identifies his disability as Asperger's Syndrome, form of autism. He is a popular children's author as well as an illustrator, abstract painter and television screenwriter. He won two Children's BAFTAs in 1999 for his screenplays for the BBC series Microsoap and The Wild House.

Like Christopher, the narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon is an atheist but an 'atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them, like President Clinton giving evidence to Kenneth Starr about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, just to make sure I'm not technically lying - 'All things bright and beautiful, the hmmm hmmm made them all.'' (books.guardian.co.uk)

Questions for discussion

1. What did you enjoy about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time? Was there anything you didn't enjoy? Why?

2. Why do you think this book has become such an enormous bestseller?

3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was, unusually, published simultaneously in children's and adult versions. Do you think this is justified, or does it sit more easily in one category or the other? How do you feel about the use of strong language in a book for children?

4. How easy did you find it to relate to Christopher? Do you feel that you were really able to get inside his mind?

5. Why is mathematics so important to Christopher? What else is important in similar ways?

6. Why does Christopher find it so hard to relate to other people?

7. What role does Siobhan play in Christopher's life?

8. What fears does Christopher have to confront? In what ways does he develop as a person?

9. How does relating to Christopher bring to light the hang-ups, fears and inadequacies of those he encounters? Did you become more aware of any of your own while reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time? Did this book change you in any way?

10. What were some of the good and bad ways in which Christopher's father related to him? Why had he lied to Christopher about his mother?

11. Why does Christopher not believe in God? What do you think of Christopher's argument against the existence of God (chapter 199, pages 203-204)? What are the strengths and weaknesses of his argument? What else does he say in the book about his disbelief in God?

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