โ Scribed by Mark Haddon
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old
narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems
in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is
touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to
him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense
what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed
and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a
page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the
killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage
and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on
deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that
remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon,
Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not
closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by
sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their
surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by
imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which
is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't
eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a
kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. Though
Christopher insists, "This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because
I do not understand them," the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. The
result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an
out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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