I made a lovely Sunday visit to Half-Priced Books yesterday and picked up this Mark Haddon novel for $6. The story is written in the first person perspective of Christopher Boone, a British teenager experiencing life within the autism spectrum. Although autism is not explicitly stated in the text itself, the story describes experiences and preferences that are undoubtedly characteristics of autism spectrum disorders, such as having all of the prime numbers from 1 to 7,057 memorized, an unexplained and severe disgust for the color yellow, an extremely negative reaction to being touched or hugged, and an inability to recognize and relate to complex human emotion.
I am so far 42 pages in to this novel and found it hard not to fall in love with young Christopher as he so bluntly points out some of the nuances of language and human interaction that most of us take for granted. The story has started with the discovery that a neighborhood dog has died from a garden fork wound and Christopher has decided to take up investigation of the dog's murder.
As a mostly non-fiction reader, I am happy to have found a novel that is holding my attention so well. I think this is going to be a fabulous plane ride/poolside book for my extended weekend vacation coming up in less than 72 hours!
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