(Published by Vintage)
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Christopher Boone is the unlikeliest of storytellers. He is a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism) but neither term is ever mentioned in this excellent book. That said, this is very much his book and it is his story that makes it such an un-put-down-able read. Prompted by his teacher, Christopher decides to write a book about something that interests him. The catalyst is the murder of his neighbour’s dog, who is gored with a garden fork. Based on what happened to Wellington and being a big Sherlock Holmes fan, Christopher decides to write a murder mystery novel. Obviously, there’s much more to it than that, and Mark Haddon has created a highly memorable character. We are guided through the internal dialogue of a boy who is not used to sharing his thoughts with anyone. He claims to not like fiction and the book is interspersed by the facts and non-fictions that consume Christopher. He loves science, his pet rat Toby and is a keen mathematician who wants to be an astronomer. Among the things he hates are people touching him, food on a plate touching off itself and the colours brown and yellow. They may seem like anomalies in the context of autism but then who hasn’t got similar hang-ups and quirks?
Ok, so not everyone lies on the ground groaning in crowded places when they’re uneasy but his condition isn’t as other as ‘normal’ people would like to think. Christopher’s world is one of scrapbook moments. He remembers things that interest him, mentally cutting them out to be studied and examined. Order and patterns have as much resonance for him as the emotions he seems incapable of dealing with. Living with his father and an absent mother, much of the conflict in Christopher’s life is about approaching emotional or personal matters with an over-zealous logic. Everything in his revolves around sequences, numbers and maps – that he’s a mathematical genius is not surprising.
Mark Haddon was been writing children’s books for years and this book has been deemed the ultimate cross-generation novel. It’s a book for all ages because Christopher’s voice is so authentic. The things that happen to him might seem commonplace to us but are life-changing to him. Haddon shows us the good and bad in Christopher and asks us to accept him as he is. So as not to distract from that priority, the plot is simple, with a few twists and turns. That the book focuses on Christopher’s honesty and the deception around him is not a negative – but the framework within which he is viewed outside his nuclear community is. His diagrams and charts litter the book and break up a text that you could never get tired of (even if some of the maths might make your brain hurt). He is fragile yet rigid, seemingly ‘simple’ but extremely clever, he doesn’t understand jokes but his seriousness makes us laugh (with, not at, him) throughout. This is a wonderfully humane book that illuminates the small things in life that most of us forget to look at. Haddon’s prose is easily absorbed and this story impacts on so many levels. Wonderful stuff that’s not like anything else I’ve ever read and I’d recommend to anyone.
The DJ 
