Michael Portillo Article for Kensington and Chelsea News

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

5 February 2004

What is it like to suffer from that form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome? Those who have the condition would find it difficult to explain it to us. Those who don't have it cannot say for certain. Mark Haddon has made a brave attempt to cross that divide and to view the world from the point of view of an autistic boy called Christopher, the narrator in Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I was asked to review the book on a television programme recently, and I am pleased to see that this highly original and thought-provoking work has gone on to win the Whitbread Prize for book of the year.

Christopher is extremely good with figures and mental arithmetic. Indeed, as the book's narrator he decides to number the chapters by prime numbers: 2,3,5,7,11,13 etc. He is highly knowledgeable about astronomy. However, he finds it difficult to relate to other people. He cannot bear to be touched, for example, and will scream and lash out if someone attempts it. When he gets upset, his behaviour can be very wild. But hearing that his mother has died of a heart attack, his reaction is wholly unemotional. "Did she die of an aneurism or an embolism?" is all he thinks to ask.

He doesn't converse as others do. If someone asks a question, he replies, but he doesn't get the point of chatting, and so feels no need to react if the other person merely makes a statement. He loves order and routine. If, on the other hand, he is put in a strange place, or if the routine is interrupted, or the furniture in his house is moved, he becomes very stressed. He cannot travel unassisted to anywhere unknown. Take him to a crowded shop, and he may simply lie down on the floor and yell.

The boy is very literal. He cannot really grasp metaphors. If you say "I've had a dog of a day" he would regard that as a lie, since a day is one kind of a thing, and a dog another, and the two cannot be equated. He is incapable of lying himself, and so cannot cope with the lies told by others, even when others might regard them as the normal conveniences of social life.

Haddon's narrator investigates the killing of his next door neighbour's giant poodle. He gets more answers than he could have banked on.

There are those who will criticise Haddon for presuming to know what it's like to be autistic. However, I found it a stimulating insight into how, maybe, someone like Christopher looks at the world, finding puzzling many things that are straightforward to you and me. It also aroused in me the strongest sympathy for parents who require extraordinary patience and energy to cope with the demands of their children. A highly readable novel that increases our understanding of such a difficult condition is very welcome.