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Showing posts from August, 2010

A mystery wrapped inside an enigma

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I have a younger brother with autism, and for a time I struggled to understand his condition which made me unable to accept who he is while we were growing up. Fortunately, I managed to read three magnificent books that helped me change the way I view him as a person over the years, and one of them is Mark Haddon's novel about a savant who attempts to solve the murder of his neighbor's dog. What made me instantly connect with this book are three things: (1) the first-person accounts of the lead character, Christopher Boone whose third name is 'Francis' which is also my brother's; (2) he idolizes Sherlock Holmes like I do; and (3) the logical but also absurd observations and theories that Christopher comes up with to make sense of the world around him. The narrative voice is peculiar, disjointed and hilarious all at once and that's really the charm of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time . Christopher may possess a supreme kind o