Curiosity Saves the Cat
I opened this book with doubt and reluctance, for I am naturally not a fan of tender stories that tug at your heartstrings with their dramatic flair and saccharine verbiage. But The Curious Incident of the Dog gives you none of that, and this quality of the book- that light, funny, and innocent atmosphere- makes the story of Christopher even more heart-rending. The point of view of the story makes the book uniquely special. It is chronicled and narrated by Christopher, an autistic teenager who is intent on finding out the murderer of his neighbor’s dog. The story was narrated cleanly and simply, which adds to the fact that all Christopher writes is the truth. All that is deemed to be chronicled are only those that he observed with his very eyes, and those that he felt and learned. The objectivity of the way Christopher feels and thinks provokes such emotion in me because I could see how different he is from normal people. The book opened me to the idea of what sets autistic people from the rest of the world. The author was able to show that Christopher does not have a different world, but a different way of seeing the world. The world for him should be a fruit of logic and objectivity. This accounts for the fact that throughout the novel, there are bits and pieces of trivia, as Christopher is fond of showing people that life is like a math equation. The readers are not let in on his world, because he has no separate, delusional world, but he lets readers people to see with new eyes, with his eyes. Surprisingly, as his curiosity compels him to find out who killed the dog and make the pieces fit, he realizes the cold brutality of his discovery, not just about Mrs. Shear’s pet, but also about his own life. Uncovering the truth though, is only half of the whole experience. It is actually about how Christopher, an autistic child, reacts to and faces the truths laid bare before him that make this novel a staple in every bookworm’s personal collection.
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