curious incident of the dog in the nightime - Review

I recently finished this book, and I must say that I was not totally blown away by any stretch. The buzz was more intriguing than the book itself.

It is a book written from the perspective of an autistic boy. There is some trite commentary on how how logic doesn't play into "normal dailiy living" i.e. white lies and untruths for the greater good and intuition, but I really didn't get any profound insight from reading the book. for Example, while explaining the monty hall problem: "Intution can sometime get things wrong. And intuition is what some people use to make decisions."

In retrospect, the character of the father is as dichotomous as the logic/life juxtaposition that carries throughout the book...but only in retrospect. The patient and selfless man, the man who has boundless patience for his autistic son and his daily challenges, is both this man and the same man that kills a dog in anger because his mistress is perceived to give more attention to it. This somehow doesn't make sense. To be capable of such creulty in anger and yet rarely loses his temper wiht the boy??? Eventhough there is a part where he hits the boy in anger, but you still don't see that he is capapble of killing an animal. Hard to buy...there should have been a better reason for killing the dog, or it should have been someone else that killed it.

While teh book is triumphant for the main character, it still left too much undone. Father buys the boy a new dog and trys to earn his trust back. You hardly feel better for Christopher, what if daddy gets pissed again...does he kill your new puppy?...Are you next???

I give the book a D - A huge waste of a weekend read - but should make for a quick book club discussion.