Book 12 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon fulfills the category “Book with at least One Million Ratings on Goodreads” for the 2019 PopSugar Reading Challenge.

So yes. I’m late to the game once again. I tend not to read or watch TV shows currently in demand and have never been a girl for best-selling literary fiction. A good book is better than a popular one. Most of my favorite books were never best sellers. So, recently I’ve read, for the first time, books such as this one, Anne of Green Gables, and Neuromancer. Yep. I carve my own path.

**snort**

I was curious myself what the deal was with the dog. Listening to the book on audio was an amazing experience. The book delighted me with a great reader, elegant style of writing, and interesting and different subject matter. I loved Christopher. I have two daughters, twelve and fifteen, and I used to be a teacher. The character was very relatable to my world. I thought Mr. Haddon gave Christopher such an amazing voice and showed the readers wonderful insight into the boy’s universe

Christopher’s journey to find out who murdered the dog, discovery of the real truths in his life, and his struggle to get himself to a better place was a beautiful thing. The author presented his troubles, his reasoning, and his stories in such a relatable way. My heart felt for him at every step of discovery and challenge. I think I experienced all the emotions he could not and connected with the character as a person and as a mother. 

Before you read any more of this blog entry, let me say, read the book. It’s short, charming, and will give everyone a better understanding of the autistic mind. It is well-written, emotion-evoking, and sweet. Now for the spoilers—don’t read any more if you haven’t read the book.

***Spoiler Alert***

I hated the ending. Seriously hated it. It was like the end of The Horse Whisperer book. We all saw that movie with the happy ending, read the book and had some of our soul eaten. If you’ve read it, you know what I mean. The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-time didn’t quite have that impact, but damn if the ending didn’t negate much of the book.

Christopher seeks the murderer of the dog. Along the way he discovers he’s been lied to, seriously lied to about life-changing things. His mother is not dead, only left for another man. His father killed the dog. OMG!! So Christopher takes off. He can no longer live with a man who murdered an animal. He finds his mother, and she remembers to not be an asshole parent. So, we all agree the father is a useless piece of poo, right?

In the end, to entice Christopher back to his father, the man gets a puppy that must stay at his house. If Christopher wants to see the dog, he must go to his dad’s.

W.T.F?

The dog-killer gets a dog to show he’s a good guy? Wouldn’t Christopher fear for the life of that pup every moment of every day? Wouldn’t he be apoplectic with concern about letting a murderer keep his puppy? The whole book played up how the boy’s brain worked. I felt like I knew Christopher as if he was my child. I cannot believe in any universe he would be okay with his father having a dog. Maybe I am off the mark here, but there had to be another way to entice the boy back, maybe something with his school, his love of math or a third party caring for the dog. The boy ran away when he discovered all his father did. I don’t understand how he could have stood for the man owning a dog, his dog.

Anyway, I loved most of The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-time. I give it four puppy dogs.