In no particular order, here are some wonderfully written, fun, diverse books written by people with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. I’ve read quite a few of them, and plan on reading others:

Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison. This is a funny, poignant account of Robison’s experiences growing up with Asperger’s syndrome. Interestly, he is the older brother of the wildly successful author of Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs, who does not have Asperger’s. It’s fascinating to read about both brothers’ completely different and varied experiences in and perception of the same family. I’ve heard Robison speak, and he is a very animated speaker and passionate advocate for those like himself with Asperger’s syndrome. Visit Robison’s blog or website.

Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extaordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet. This is an honest, open narrative by the autistic Tammet and includes an account of his amazing feat of reciting pi to the 22,514th digit. He is also a very talented writer. His second book is Embracing the Wide Sky: Exploring the Horizons of the Mind which I haven’t read yet.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.  Although this author is not autistic, I include this book here because it is written from the perspective of a fictional character with autism.  It’s an intriguing look into what it might be like in the mind of an autistic child.

Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin.  The title of this book does a great job summarizing the work that Grandin has been doing with her life – using her autism to an advantage to empathize with and understand how animals feel.  She is a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University.  Famously, she has worked with the meat industry to improve the ethical treatments of animals destined for slaughter.   Her newest book is The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s.  More information on Grandin can be found on her website.

Today I started and finished The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon within a few hours. I don’t have time to write a complete review at the moment, as I’m away until Friday. What I will say is that it was fantastic; incredibly written and wonderfully thought-provoking.. Amazing and I am disappointed I haven’t read it before today.

Watch this space for my review..

El curioso incidente del perro a medianoche es una novela que se parece a ninguna otra. Elogiada con entusiasmo por autores consagrados como Oliver Sacks e Ian McEwan, ha merecido la aprobación masiva de los lectores en todos los países donde se ha publicado, además de galardones como el Premio Whtibread y el Premio de la Commonwealth al Mejor Primer Libro.
Su protagonista, Christopher Boone, es uno de los más originales que han surgido en el panorama de la narrativa internacional en los últimos años, y está destinado a convertirse en un héroe literario universal de la talla de Oliver Twist y Holden Caulfield. A sus quince años, Christhoper Boone, conoce las capitales de todos los países del mundo, puede explicar la teoría de la relatividad y recitar los números primos hasta el 7.507 pero le cuesta relacionarse con otros seres humanos. Le gustan las listas, los esquemas y la verdad, pero odia el amarillo, el marrón y el contacto físico. Si bien nunca ha ido solo más allá de la tienda de la esquina, la noche que el perro de la vecina aparece atravesado por un horcón, Christopher decide iniciar la búsqueda del culpable.

I’m baaaack!  It’s amazing how much time a newborn takes up.  He doesn’t do anything but eat, sleep, and poop, so why is it that my hands always seem occupied?

Anyway, I finally made a trip to the library last week, and I finished two really swell books: John Dufresne’s collection of short stories Johnny Too Bad and Mark Haddon’s novel A Spot of Bother.  They’ve both written other books, and I’m excited to read more of their work.

Johnny Too Bad was fun because many of the stories were related, about the life of a writer named John (how coincidental) and his very animated dog Spot.  I’m not sure why writers love to write about writers, but it’s very common.  What’s not so common is how Dufresne handled the matter.  Because not only does his protagonist share his name and vocation, but the character’s own fictional protagonist also bears striking resemblance to the character John.  John says in the title story, “I told Dad that Spot was in the book, that he belonged to the central character, a writer, not so unlike myself.  I told him the writer’s father had vision problems, so naturally he assumed the father is him.  I did not tell him that the writer and his father have a problematic relationship.  I did not want my father hurt by his misperception.  Even if I told him now that he’s not the character, he’ll think I’m lying.  Spot’s Spot, after all.  The writer’s a pathetic little scribbler who left his loving wife, after all.”  Ouch.

Dufresne is just as good at the long story as he is at flash fiction, and both types of story are displayed in this collection.  “Close By Me Forever” is a very powerful story about memory and love, and it packs a great twist at the end.  “Based on a True Story” plays with the form and condenses part of the story into a numbered list preceded by, “And then what happens is this.”  As much as I enjoyed Spot’s antics in the stories about John, I think “Died and Gone to Heaven” may have been my favorite story; it’s the kind of story that once you’ve finished, you can almost physically feel the author’s skill in crafting the tightly wound threads of the story.  For starters, the story opens with this magnificent two-page sentence, the kind you have to go back and start over a few times till you pick up on its rhythm.  It’s about an old murder, a family of really despicable people, and a police officer who can’t leave well enough alone.  The last sentences are every bit as beautiful as the first: “And he looked up into the clear night, saw the Milky Way splashed across the sky, and realized how everything in the universe was so far away, and was, he knew, speeding away from everything else in the universe, speeding away from him, this place, this earth, this small patch of bottomland where he sat bleeding and remembering, getting smaller and smaller.  He sank his hands into the soft clay of the bayou bank, shut his eyes, and held on.”  Another of my favorite lines appeared in “I Will Eat a Piece of the Roof and You Can Eat the Window,” after a funeral: “And while they laughed and drank, they were able, I suppose, to forget that they, too, were dying.”

I haven’t read Haddon’s prize-winning novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but I’ll be picking it up very soon because I loved A Spot of Bother.  It’s about a man named George who finds a lesion on his hip, convinces himself that it’s cancerous, and subsequently develops a debilitating fear of death.  He sees death everywhere, and he suffers panic attacks wherein the floor falls out from underneath him, and he wedges himself between the toilet and the bathtub and softly recites nursery rhymes to himself.  Meanwhile, the rest of his family is falling apart: his wife Jean is having an affair; his daughter Katie is getting married, then not getting married, then getting married again; and his gay son Jamie is desperately trying to win back the love of his life before it’s too late.  Haddon is a marvelous writer, and he makes his characters’ unhappy lives very funny while still poignant.  And poor, dear George.  He must be the most sympathetic character I’ve read in quite a while; you just want to give him a big hug and tell him everything will be okay.

I’m headed out to the library again today.  Hopefully, I’ll find another couple of gems as delightful as these!  Happy reading, all.

Do your teachers speak in a really weird language when they think you’re not looking? Do they wear a brass wrist band that they use to communicate with someone in another galaxy? Do their eyes flash blue when you annoy them?  If you answered yes to all of these questions it is very likely that your teachers are aliens from another planet and you should get as far away from them as possible.

In Mark Haddon’s new book, Boom!, Jim and Charlie do exactly the opposite when they discover something weird is going on.  When Jim overhears a conversation between his teachers, he believes that they are trying to get him sent to a new school and so with the help of his best friend Charlie, they bug the staff room.  However, what they actually hear is two of their teachers speaking in a strange language and so they set out to find some answers to these strange goings-on.  This story has everything – action, adventure, aliens, mysterious men in gray suits, cool alien technology, a strange language and lots of laughs. 

You may know of Mark Haddon as the author of the hugely popular Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Boom! is a completely different sort of story for a different age group but it’s an out-of-this-world read.

And when the universe has finished exploding, all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall toward the center of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us from seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving toward us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.
—

I love birthdays because we get to have cake in class (again!), plus plus today during the history lecture Joy passed me shortbread she baked! I’ve been listening to too much Laura Marling and Sleeping At Last. There’s still so much to be done and time is fast running out.

These are just ghosts that broke my heart before I met you.

What I got at the first time reading this novel was “what is it all about?” I knew of course it’s telling about a journey of an autistic twelve-year-old boy named Christopher who worked out a mystery of his neighbor’s dog’s death, but what made me blank was the jump of the time and the boring story. Until the half of the novel I was still wondering what that was all about and I hadn’t feel something good keeping me going on so I paused the rest for quite long time until last night I finally finished it.

I got something nice in the end, exactly right in the very last paragraph. I just realized at that time that this novel wasn’t about the journey but the boy himself. I mean, he was the one who made the novel interesting; the way he wrote his journey, doing things, having some likes and dislikes, his belief on something unusual, etc. This novel gave me some new point of view about how an autistic boy thinks, which was really complicated.

Christopher wrote things which actually didn’t need to be written, as though he didn’t write them, it wouldn’t disturb the story. But, well, just like what I said, it’s not about the story, it’s about him. He liked to tell his feeling and thought about things a lot! He had unusual belief like if he saw 3 red cars in a row, then that would be a Good Day, or 4 cars for a Super Good Day, and yellow cars for the opposite, the Bad Day. He had pet rat named Toby (it’s weird and disgusting for most of us but he liked him so much). When he saw something, he drew all the pattern exactly in his brain. He didn’t just hear things but listen to them. He remembered every single thing in every single place and how it looked/smelled like and who was/were there and what they do when he saw it. What’s quite simply interesting is that he thought like a computer where once he had too many things in mind, he stopped thinking by picturing that action as pressing Ctrl+Shift+Del and stopped all the running program.

Overall, it’s really a good novel if you keep reading and don’t think about the usual story. Think and figure out the way a 12-year-old autistic boy thinks. This is brilliant!

En “Må-bra-bok” säger omslaget till Mark Haddons Utslag av oro men det vet jag inte om jag skulle kalla den. Det är däremot en riktigt bra bok om en ganska dysfunktionell familj. Pappa George är något av en hypokondriker och är säker på att hans hudutslag är cancer. Mamma Jean är otrogen och vet inte riktigt vem hon ska välja. Dottern Katie ska gifta sig med Ray trots att hon inte är säker på att hon älskar honom och trots att hennes familj inte tycker om honom. Sonen James älskar Tony, men han vågar inte stå för sin kärlek. Till systerns bröllop ska han definitivt inte få följa med.

Dessa udda figurers liv snurrar snabbare och snabbare mot Katies bröllop och mot undergången. Trots svärtan är det ingen deprimerande bok, tvärtom bjuder den på en hel del skratt. Historien är dessutom både bra, gripande och annorlunda. Tempot är vansinnigt, men samtidigt vilar Haddon i detaljerna. Han tecknar omsorgsfullt en familjs sönderfall och/eller återuppbyggnad. Vad det egentligen är som händer vet vi inte förrän det är över. Det handlar om att finna trygghet både i sig själv och i andra. Att kunna titta på sitt liv med nya ögon och faktiskt se vad som verkligen finns i det. Vad och vem som har betydelse. Det handlar om att våga lyssna till sin egen röst istället för att leva det liv andra vill att man lever. Det handlar också om att livet kanske inte alltid är så himla kul eller glamouröst, men att vardagen också kan vara okej.

Tack min hemliga bokvän för denna mycket läsvärda bok. Mark Haddons debutbok Den besynnerliga händelsen med hunden om natten (underbar titel) står definitivt kvar på min Vill-läsa-lista.

We have three dogs at home, 2 mixed breed and 1 pure bred, a black russian terrier and since January I’ve been doing a walk with one or more of them of over 1 mile every day as my part of improving my health. During the Summer (April  & May & June) I started taking them to Drumpellier Country Park to give them and me a better quality of walk, accidentally that increased my average distance from 1 to 2 miles per day.

Anyway yesterday, Sherry, the small terrier cross was on her walk and although the weather has become less predictable and dark sooner, we took a turn round the Park. Once you get away from the main loch area, it’s usually safe enough to allow the dogs off-lead to run wild in the woods to smell and search for rabbits, foxes and squirrels and trying to catch them without much success of course.

Yesterday was no exception and Sherry was off deep in the woods but still sort of within sight of the main path and then one glance away later and she was nowhere to be seen. We had to follow her into the woods and after a short while could hear the sounds of a distressed dog somewhere – but where?

Then, past some trees and ferns we saw her. She was kind of like a dog swimming  - you know the kind of thing head above water, back and tail above the surface, everything else paddling like fury! Except for one thing – the water was black water saturated peat and the more she “paddled” the further down in the black bog she went. She was now beginning to look distressed, like this was her swansong. Jennifer gat a tree branch from nearby and getting as close to the bog as possible put the branch in front her. She managed to get her front paws on to the branch and that was enough to help her ease herself gradually out of the black stuff.

It was painful watching this virtual rebirth but worth it in the end – Sherry survived her ordeal and bounded off towards the path while we were left drained emotionally and physically. She returned to the car no longer a fawn coloured dog but now a black and tan coloured dog. She got hosed down when we got her home and then blow dried so she had a great night.

One I’d rather not repeat

JohnF

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

When I was asleep I had one of my favourite dreams. Sometimes I have it during the day, but then it’s a daydream. But I often have it at night as well.

And in the dream nearly everyone on the earth is dead, because they have caught a virus. But it’s not like a normal virus. It’s like a computer virus. And people catch it because of the meaning of something an infected person says and the meaning of what they do with their faces when they say it, which means that people can also get it from watching an infected person on television, which means that it spreads around the world really quickly.

And when people get the virus they just sit on the sofa and do nothing and they don’t eat or drink and so they die. But sometimes I have different versions of the dream, like when you can see two versions of a film, the ordinary one and the Director’s Cut, like Blade Runner. And in some versions of the dream the virus makes them crash their cars or walk into the sea and drown, or jump into rivers, and I think that this version is better because then there aren’t bodies of dead people everywhere.

And eventually there is no one left in the world except people who don’t look at other people’s faces and who don’t know what these pictures mean

and these people are all special like me. And they like being on their own and I hardly ever see them because they are like Okapi in the jungle in Congo which are a kind of antelope and very shy and rare.

And I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question. But if I don’t want to go anywhere I don’t have to, and I can stay at home and eat broccoli and oranges and liquorice laces all the time, or I can play computer games for a whole week, or I can just sit in the corner of the room and rub a pound coin backwards and forwards over the ripple shapes on the surface of the radiator. And I don’t have to go to France.

Les den.

I’ve gotten a few questions for author Marlon James. Post more below. Also, don’t forget to participate in the writing exercise. I’ve gotten a good response to that so far and would like to see more.

The storyteller in A Clockwork Orange

It’s the night of Lord Darlington’s important dinner meeting. His butler, Stevens, is making sure everything goes off without a hitch and nothing will prevent the evening’s perfection — even the fact that his father is dying upstairs. In the end, when his father dies, Stevens speaks with great pride how me must now be a legend among butlers having sacrificed so much to do his duty.

Stevens is telling the story in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. No, more than that — we (the reader) get a glimpse inside Stevens’ head. And what’s most thrilling about this novel, we learn that Stevens is fallible. He’s an unreliable narrator. The real story presents itself in the details he can’t put together or process — but we can. We learn the man Stevens is so devoted to (Darlington) is actually a fascist and that Stevens has sacrificed so much of his life, including a chance to connect with his father and a romance, to perform duties like tidying things up and keeping the pantry stocked. And that’s the real story.

The story is all in the voice. Voice in fiction — not just point of view (first person, second person, third person, third person limited, etc.) — is perspective. It’s complex and it requires a lot of thought. Who is telling your story? When are they telling it? Why are the telling it? Why are they telling it the way they are? Selecting the right lense through which to view your story makes all the difference. And the voice provides a wealth of opportunities for you as a writer.

Believe me, I know. I used to think POV was all that mattered. My first manuscript  was written in first person. But I never really went deeply into my narrator’s mind or thought about when he was telling this story or why. In later drafts, I tried for something far more complex. I went for a third-person-limited narrator, but tried to shift the focus between three characters. The shifts have to be very apparent when you’re writing like this, the voice have to be totally unique, otherwise you’re left with something muddled. I tinkered and tinkered. Seven years passed. I threw my mangled manuscript in a drawer where it remains today.

A fellow writing student who was adept at voice and POV once told me he was so good at it because he’d been an actor. That’s it, essentially. You have to inhabit your characters. You have to inhabit your narrator. Read Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It’s a murder mystery told from the point of view of an autistic savant — a man who can perform complex mathematical equations but can’t understand basic human emotions. Christopher is telling the story, and better yet, we the narrator know things he does not — we recognize things he can’t say, and in those moments, in the subtext and in the details unspoken, lies the story. It makes for a much more emotional and realistic experience than if Haddon had gone the route of the Victorians and chosen his narrator to be God.

There are an infinite number of options when choosing a voice and a POV. I think it’s where all the possibilities lie in fiction. Is a story better told from high over head with the perspective of centuries separating its telling and it’s happening? Or is it better told in the present tense, in the moment, from the perspective of a character whose views are obscured? Should it be told by a teenager addicted to ultraviolence like in A Clockwork Orange? Should different characters with varying degrees of mental capacity and self absorbtion tell it like in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury? Four third-person limited narrators, including a dog — like in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle? A middle-aged pedophile like in Lolita?

This is always difficult for me — I’m on draft No. 4 of my newest manuscript. I’ve gone from a third-person limited POV to that of a 12-year-old boy, but now I’m struggling with degree of distance. Why is he telling the story and when? Is he an adult looking back? Is he writing in a diary during the events? Are we simply in his head as the story unfolds?

Take a look at two of your favorite books. Who is telling the story in those books? Why are they telling the story? Where are they and when are they telling the story in relation to its happening? Why do you think the author chose this perspective?

And how do you choose your voice and POV when writing a story?

In honor of Random Acts of Publicity Week (thanks to Darcy Pattison’s Fiction Notes) I plan to write about some of my favorite recently read books. Now, I don’t have much experience writing book reviews. However, I have been reading books forever (since the womb, people), and as with wine and art, I know what I like.

Please read Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. You could consider using an autistic narrator a gimmick, but it works. Oh, wow, does it work. The voice is amazing! The precise and emotionless first-person narration fit spot-on with the mathematical digressions. And the plot had more twists and turns than my son’s favorite roller coaster.

There will be more of these brief and random recommendations throughout the week. Let me know in the comment box what you thought of this book if you read it, or make suggestions of your own.

Happy Random Reading Week!

The voice in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is unmistakable. It is the voice of someone with Special Needs, as psychology and social labels would tell one. It is the voice of Christopher who, in his yawning impotence in the face of complicated human emotions, finds refuge in mathematics and the sciences. It is the voice of a young man who refuses to be touched, disdains metaphors and the color yellow, and spreads out his fingers in a fan to express love for his father and mother.

Christopher, who likes prime numbers and solves quadratic equations in his head out of boredom or panic, discovers the murder of Wellington, a dog in the neighborhood. He embarks on a detective work largely patterned after Sherlock Holmes’s; he interviewed strangers,  picked out a Red Herring and a prime suspect, and adopted a chain of reasoning. He puts to good use his photographic memory.

The investigation leads Christopher to a discovery of a kept truth in his life, and he is now the unwilling main character in his self-devised mystery narrative. In his confusion, fear, and hurt, he draws strength from the irrevocability of logic and intelligent thinking. During a difficult moment, he even exhibits a certain self-consciousness and imagines a deadly virus on earth, where “there is no one left in the world except people who don’t look at other people’s faces and who don’t know what these pictures (emoticons) mean and these people are all special people like me.”

There are plenty of heartbreaking bits in this novel, and author Mark Haddon, who has worked with autistic individuals as a young man, knows how to excavate an emotional site with the use of seemingly detached pronouncements: “I couldn’t hear people talking so I felt much calmer and it was nice,” or “..or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own.” With a matter-of-fact tone – a seemingly neutral treatment of the tale by the narrator himself - readers realize that Christopher’s world are not at all different from theirs, and they are let in on the many different secrets in surviving pain, bewilderment, and too many noises in the head.

The voice in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is unmistakable. It is the voice of someone with Special Needs, as psychology and social labels would tell one. It is the voice of Christopher who, in his yawning impotence in the face of complicated human emotions, finds refuge in mathematics and the sciences. It is the voice of a young man who refuses to be touched, disdains metaphors and the color yellow, and spreads out his fingers in a fan to express love for his father and mother.

Christopher, who likes prime numbers and solves quadratic equations in his head out of boredom or panic, discovers the murder of Wellington, a dog in the neighborhood. He embarks on a detective work largely patterned after Sherlock Holmes’s; he interviewed strangers,  picked out a Red Herring and a prime suspect, and adopted a chain of reasoning. He puts to good use his photographic memory.

The investigation leads Christopher to a discovery of a kept truth in his life, and he is now the unwilling main character in his self-devised mystery narrative. In his confusion, fear, and hurt, he draws strength from the irrevocability of logic and intelligent thinking. During a difficult moment, he even exhibits a certain self-consciousness and imagines a deadly virus on earth, where “there is no one left in the world except people who don’t look at other people’s faces and who don’t know what these pictures (emoticons) mean and these people are all special people like me.”

There are plenty of heartbreaking bits in this novel, and author Mark Haddon, who has worked with autistic individuals as a young man, knows how to excavate an emotional site with the use of seemingly detached pronouncements: “I couldn’t hear people talking so I felt much calmer and it was nice,” or “..or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own.” With a matter-of-fact tone – a seemingly neutral treatment of the tale by the narrator himself - readers realize that Christopher’s world are not at all different from theirs, and they are let in on the many different secrets in surviving pain, bewilderment, and too many noises in the head.

Who would not want to read this book? Granted, few of us could walk into a shop and ask for it very easily, but isn’t it an intriguing title? It does exist under this title, but not in very many copies, I believe. It’s also not the same book, because Mark Haddon re-wrote his earlier book.

Now it’s called Boom!, which is OK. And the book is very OK. Very funny, and it still has plenty of funny words in it, because that’s the language spoken by the aliens.

It’s got some stock type characters, but that’s fine. You know where you are with old characters. Jimbo and his friend Charlie are the kind of boys who happen upon adventures. You just can’t trust your teachers at school. (I’m reminded of a song that goes ‘the creature was a teacher..’) Spudvetch.

Jimbo has an older sister who is a pain and she has a boyfriend who is a worse pain. But they have their uses. Successful mothers, one potentially useless dad, aliens, brass wristbands, gourmet cooking, motorbikes, Volvos.

There must be something about Camasunary, because this is the second book I’ve read set partly in this remote corner of Skye. Funny goings-on in both cases, but Mark Haddon’s are the weirdest. I love Becky, the older sister. She is capable and someone you want on your side when things are difficult.

And who wouldn’t like an alien called Britney?

Snekkit.

I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It was a fast, easy read, but there was no shortage of poignancy and hilarious lines. It is the story of Christopher John Francis Boone, an autistic boy with a talent for math. He begins the story by deciding to investigate the death of his neighbor’s dog. The rest I won’t reveal, but the lessons he learns and the observations he makes about people were far more valuable and entertaining than the actual plot points.

Like the TV show Monk, this book creates a different kind of hero. He doesn’t fit in with the rest of the world and allowances must be made. But he is smart and lovable anyway. There are bits of Christopher in all of us. This book reminded me of the ways that humans seek connection, pretend to be normal, try to follow rules, and how we deal with confusion and change. We have to tolerate a certain amount of change. The question is what is our threshold, and what do we do about it? We can’t all go ballistic and punch people, but I think many of us want to at times. Children don’t censor themselves in the same way adults do. This particular child makes a point of always telling the truth. That was refreshing and very comical.

A few of my favorite passages:

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of being new.

Every other sentence seemed to be an astute observation about the way people are. I love how Christopher is a mess in many ways, but he also has a great talent. He’s not ashamed of who he is.
He knows he has limits, but he’s willing to test them. He always wants to learn more. He does not understand people, but he doesn’t give up trying. He perseveres. Life may not be perfect, but it’s going to be OK.

Very cool book. Written from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old boy with Asperger’s who is investigating the murder of his neighbor’s dog, this book does an excellent job of showing some of the thought processes and patterns common to people with Asperger’s. Near the end of the book, he describes one of his favorite dreams. In it, nearly everyone in the world dies of a virus. It’s not like a flu, but more like a computer virus. It is spread by looking at people’s faces when they are making an emotion and understanding what their faces are saying. You can catch it through the TV, so it spreads very quickly. Sometimes in his dream, people just don’t want to move at all when they get the virus, other times they jump into the sea. He likes the second version better, because then there are no bodies.

There are just a few people left over who are special like Christopher, but you hardly ever see them, because they are all quiet and shy. And so Christopher can go places without worrying about crowds or that people will touch him or try to ask him questions. And he breaks into people’s houses by smashing their windows with bricks (because they don’t care any more) and gets to be a detective. In his dream, he goes to sleep and then he wakes up happy.

It made me sad on two levels: that his perfect world is one without people, and that our world is so emphatically contrary to what is best and happiest for him. I was reading this during the distopian “Blindness” and they had me thinking about who gets to decide what the perfect world looks like– who decides what any world looks like.

A good book, often darkly funny, and a nice way of really understanding the way Asperger’s ticks.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger’s, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour’s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

BooksAtRandom

This book is funny, sad, weird and sweet. Four adjectives aren’t enough but you really need to read it to understand his magic.

The only thing I can say is that Mark Haddon is an amazing and innovative writer and he’s able to make you feel part of the novel with his characters.

I’m currently reading his new novel “A Spot of Bother” and I hope it can be as good as the first one.

Do you know this writer?

XOXO MARYG90

P.S. I had more than 200 hits for my last post about True Blood! I’m really stunned and happy, thank you very much! I hope you enjoy all my posts, even when I’m not talking about vampires… lol

Mark Haddon, Un pequeño inconveniente. Madrid: Punto de Lectura.

Com ja va succeir divendres amb els llibres agermanats de Hemingway i Vila-Matas, la recomanació d’avui és doble; o, millor dit, és una recomanació que implica una altra recomanació prèvia. En aquesta ocassió, però, això és així perquè aquest llibre que teniu aquí enllaçat i fotografiat, tot i ser molt bo, és probable que ens hagués passat a tots per alt de no haver estat perquè, feliçment, l’anterior llibre del seu mateix autor va ser un descobriment d’aquests que fan època.

Dons sí: Mark Haddon, l’autor d’Un pequeño inconveniente, és també l’home que ens va meravellar a tots fa alguns anys amb la seva primera novel·la, una deliciosa fantasia policíaca protagonitzada per un nen autista que n’era també el narrador de la història i que es titulava El curiós incident del gos a mitjanit. Si aquest és el primer cop que sentiu a parlar de Mark Haddon, aquesta és la novel·la que heu de llegir: un llibre tendre i ple d’humor que comença amb un gos mort de forma gens accidental i termina amb nosaltres, pobres lectors, amb el cor encongit de tantes emocions tan ben escrites. Però, com que en realitat resulta poc probable que a aquestes alçades de la pel·lícula encara no us hagueu concedit el plaer de llegir El curiós incident del gos a mitjanit, ara el que toca és recomenar-vos la segona novel·la de Mr. Haddon.

I el fet és que Un pequeño inconveniente és un llibre que mereix, per molts motius, ser recomenat; el primer, perquè és un llibre molt i molt divertit. I això, a l’estiu, s’agraeix especialment. La història que ens explica Mark Haddon és la de la família Hall, un grup de persones realment pintoresques que ara es troben a la vora del precipici per culpa d’una aconteixement en aparença tan feliç com és una boda. En la millor tradició de les novel·les amb famílies disfuncionals, aquí tenim a un pare que s’acaba de jubilar i comença a patir uns certs problemes físics que prefereix guardar-se en secret, una mare que amb la jubilació del seu marit no sap on i quan trobar-se amb el seu amant, un fill amb tota classe de complexos i inseguretats i una filla, la núvia de la boda imminent, que és tot un caràcter.

Un càsting d’allò més prometedor, oi? Doncs si llegiu el llibre veureu que tot és encara millor del que sembla…