Book Four

[erastes]

it  was "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon which has rather left me a little ambivalent.

i don't deny that the idea was good, and was spectacularly well executed but it left me rather cold.  Whether this is because I wasn't sure whether I was happy to see someone writing about Aspergers when they weren't a sufferer, or whether the character just didn't instil in me any compassion. I can understand why this is so, too - because we are in Christopher's head and he is necessarily unhooked from everyone.

 

I can see the hypocrisy of me wondering if someone should be writing about someone with such a disability, when I am often banging on about how an author should be getting into anyone's head they like.  The thing is here that I don't know what it achieves--perhaps to get other kids to treat Aspergers sufferers more respectfully. I don't know.

It had a bit too much of a "happy ending" for my liking too, which I don't know if Chris would have felt in that way--he would have just carried on. Would he really think that his life was better because of what he'd gone through or was that something the author inserted?  I think I would have felt that it would have been more honest if Chris had simply been as detached from his family at the end as he ever had been. 

I'm not sure.  However, it did unsettle me - and by doing that, it will be a book that won't easily leave me. I wouldn't smear the same hyperbole on it that the literary giants of the Observer, Guardian and Telegraph did, I can see the Emperor with my own eyes thank you, but I'm glad I read it.

If anyone can explain the paradox about the brown food and the milky way, I'd be grateful - I really don't want to be the billionth person to ask the author that particular question.