Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

1 review

cassie7e's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I have mixed feelings about this book. It's bittersweet, and more on the bitter side.

The author kept describing overwhelm as almost purely visual and intellectual, especially with words. While lots of sights of signs can be part of it, along with lots of things to think about, sensory overwhelm isn't just about how *many* things are around that you "notice" but that they feel intense. In fact bc of the intensity of color and brightness and sounds and temperature and air currents and clothes and people moving and bumping, you might "notice" even fewer things, bc it's hard to be observant when you're overwhelmed! The author does not seem to understand this distinction between being extremely observant while calm and being overwhelmed. 

This character isn't totally unrealistic (I'm sure there's someone out there like him), but he embodies all the stereotypes one could cram into an autistic character at once. The math thing is especially heavily utilized in this story. Christopher also is quite ableist and condescending to the other "special needs" kids at his school, has casual racial prejudice, and other prejudiced fears of certain kinds of people. I can't tell if he's just supposed to have picked these up from the people around him or if the author considered these accepable prejudices at the time that no one would think twice about reading.

There were a few things I liked about this book:

Totally related when Christopher was asked "Do you like biscuits?" and he said "Some biscuits" because there are different kinds w different textures and flavors and sweetness you could like or not!

Christopher's dad (when he's not angry and frustrated, which was hard for me to read this second time having experienced that in real life) does a lot of useful things, like explaining how he's going to touch Christopher to move him, and where, and why, and all the steps, before he does it; prepares foods in a way Christopher can/will eat and doesn't force him to eat differently; has a special gesture to show love that doesn't force hugging.

The informational digressions!
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