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

This novel follows fifteen year old Christopher Boone, who has Asperger’s Syndrome. We are invited into the organised (and a little chaotic) brain of Christopher, who explains that he has a system for everything and if this system is interrupted he feels very very uncomfortable about it. He is very good at maths and he hates the colours yellow and brown. Different types of food can’t touch on his plate or else he can no longer eat it. It is lovely to hear the story from his point of view and I feel Haddon deals with autism extremely sensitively and also with wit and joy.

Christopher’s mother has recently died and he lives with his father, the two of them trying to navigate life with all of Christopher’s quirks and habits. When the boy stumbles upon his neighbour's dog lying dead with a garden fork sticking out of it, he decides to launch an investigation into the murder. Yet it seems that certain people are less than happy about him poking around in the incident, so he sets off on a journey to London to find out the truth (having never gone further than the end of the road on his own before).

This book is extremely heart-warming, touching and really hilarious at times, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about life from the perspective of someone who sees things a little differently. Although this is children’s/young adult there is some bad language and graphic parts so I’d probably say it was more secondary school age appropriate.