weltschmerz

Finished reading The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon yesterday. It's a breath-taking piece of work, and I'd recommend it unreservedly to anyone who hasn't already read it. No spoilers, but to sum up, it's a first-person account of a boy (Christopher) with Asperger's syndrome/autism, who attempts to find the killer of his neighbour's dog and ends up in deeper waters than he expected.

There's an interview with Haddon which I found enlightening. It's significant that he never mentions a specific disability to describe Christopher's condition. Haddon says:

"We were sitting around in their offices talking, and someone mentioned autism and Asperger's, and this woman said, 'Oh, I didn't realize there was actually anything wrong with Christopher.' I've always treasured that reaction.

"It's kind of naïve but perfect. There is a very true sense in which there is something more wrong with the people around Christopher than with him. By the end of the book, although he hasn't profoundly changed — in a way, he hasn't changed at all — he has managed to restore order to his life. From his perspective, that's been a victory. But if you look at the people around him, they're still struggling with these huge problems. Their story is going to go on. They're the people who in some sense have something wrong with them."

I couldn't agree more. It doesn't make Christopher's 'hyper-rationality' any more tolerable though; some of the things he does really aren't nice. And that's the great thing about Haddon's work: he gives us insight into the workings of a mind that seems alien but is internally consistent throughout. (Insert digression into the philosophy of mind and how we can know about other minds.)

Not sure yet about re-readability. If it crosses that hurdle, it could make my favourite books list.