Reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a fairly short novel, with familiar words and sentences that are usually easy to follow. It was a book I could finish in English during a crowded semester.

I found it while studying English literature at Sungkyunkwan University. Kim Rando’s book had persuaded me to go and talk to professors in the department. Professor Park Yu-jeong was the one who put Haddon’s novel in my hands.

A book from Professor Park

I was in my last semester, applying for jobs, keeping up with classes and trying to write for the blog. When a few urgent things were finished, I went to see Professor Park.

She was not teaching undergraduates that term and seemed pleased to have one stop by. We talked for a while about what I had been doing.

At the end, she suggested two books and offered to lend me one. I chose this one.

The way she described it

I remember how simply Professor Park introduced the book.

• She described it as a story told by a boy she read as autistic, and said she thought I would find it interesting.

I had taken every class I could fit in, including one on UI and UX outside my department. With that much to read already, I was happy to take the shorter book.

Christopher starts asking questions

Christopher Boone is fifteen. He likes mathematics and follows rules that help him make his way through the day. Haddon has pointed out that the novel itself gives Christopher no diagnosis. We get to know him through what he says and does.

Christopher finds his neighbor’s dog Wellington dead and decides to find out who killed him. To investigate, he has to approach people he would normally have little reason to talk to.

The inquiry leads him to things about his family he was never meant to find. The dog gives him a question he can ask. What he learns from asking it takes him much farther than the first scene suggests.

I kept reading because Christopher has a way of noticing details somebody else would pass over. Haddon gives his reasoning enough room that you can see why a conclusion makes sense to him before you decide whether you agree.

Three doors, two goats and a car

Christopher also explains the Monty Hall problem, a probability puzzle that begins with three closed doors.

Behind one door is a car. Behind the other two are goats. A contestant chooses one door without knowing what is behind it.

The host knows what is behind every door, always opens an unchosen door with a goat behind it, and always offers the chance to switch to the remaining closed door.

Under those rules, switching wins two-thirds of the time. Your first pick had only a one-in-three chance of being right. If it was wrong, the host’s action leaves the car behind the only other unopened door.

Reading it in the original English

The vocabulary is generally familiar and the sentences tend to be direct. That comes from the particular voice Haddon gives Christopher, especially when he tells you what he saw or works through a problem.

I could read stretches of it without stopping to check the words, even when the things Christopher was working through were complicated.

I remember the book partly because of the way it came to me. If you are looking for a first novel to read in English, its short chapters also make it easy to read a little at a time.

Book details

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

ATOS book level

5.4

Interest level

Upper grades (9–12)

AR points

10.0

Word count

62,005

View on YES24