"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon

This book is told in the first-person, from the viewpoint of Christopher, a fifteen year-old boy with Asperger Syndrome. Christopher is a mathematic savant and knows all the prime numbers up to 7,057. He also has a photographic memory and can "rewind" the tape playing in his brain to recall all the details surrounding any specific event he is asked about. But he has problems with understanding human behavior and relationships because he doesn't understand facial expressions other than "happy" or "sad" and he doesn't like to be touched. He is also very literal and logical, so he doesn't understand metaphors or jokes. He has a fear of new people and places and he detests the colors yellow and brown. But he loves red, so he will add red food-coloring to brown or yellow foods before he will eat them.

The book opens with Christopher discovering the dead body of Wellington, his neighbor's poodle, who has been speared by a garden fork. The neighbor initially blames Christopher, so he decides to investigate the crime so he can clear his name. As his investigation unfolds, he records his experiences in a journal which he has entitled "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time". Because of his love of prime numbers, the chapters are even numbered with prime numbers, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and so on. During his investigation, Christopher has to face his fears of new places and new people and he meets people whom he has never before encountered, even though they live on the same street.

Through this book we enter Christopher's world and his thoughts and the reader comes to a better understanding of what it is like to experience life for someone on the autism spectrum. Everyone with autism is different, so Christopher doesn't represent all people with autism, but I did see some similarities between Christopher and my nephew and two other young people that I know with varying degrees of autism.

I found the book to be captivating and I couldn't put it down. I was caught up in Christopher's world and found myself cheering him on as he faced all the scary new experiences during his investigation and applauding for him as he tackled these new obstacles.