The curious incident of the dog in the night time

This is the story of Christopher Boone, a children that has Asperger´s Syndrome and the amazing situations he is involved in due to his special way of seeing life. It´s a touching story because all the efforts this child is doing to have a normal live but very distressing at the same time. Sometime I lost patience because of the parents not taking more time to think on their child instead of themselves.

Synopsis

The plot starts when one day Christopher finds Mrs. Shear's dog dead with a garden fork stuck to his body. He likes dogs so much that he hugs it the moment Mrs. Shears is coming out of the house and so she thinks Chris has killed the dog. When the police arrives, Chris is so angry against the policeman that he hits him and spends some hours in a prison cell until his father picks him up. Chris is living with his father after the supposed death of his mother. But things are certainly not what they seem…
He decides to start an investigation to get the guilty one that killed the dog and goes writing every detail or lead he finds in a book. But after all what it´s happened with the police, his father does not allow him to do more detecting and he´s afraid of not being able to finish his books. But one day he meets Mrs. Alexandre -a neighbour- in the shop and during his chat with her, she reveals that Chris´s Mother had an affair with Mr. Shears and so he includes this in his book.

One day his father finds the book. He reads through and so they have a big argument that brings the father to hit Chris heavily. From that moment, the child looses trust on his father and will be deeply scared.

As an apology his father takes him to the zoo but the book is still missing, Chris suspecting his father hid it. The child starts to look for the book until he finds it in his father´s room together with all the letters her mother have sent to him over the years when she was supposedly dead. Chris realizes all the lies from his father hiding the existence of her mother (due to her affair with Mr. Shear) and starts a crisis and vanishes on the spot. When his father finds him with all the letters around he collapses and apologizes for all the lies and recognizes having killed the dog, after finishing his relationship with Mrs. Shears (they had got closer and closer after the cheating of their partners and also had an affair).

But Chris is still very afraid of his father and that he could kill him so decides to leave him. After considering several options he decides to live with his mother and makes a plan to get to London without his father to know. After no few problems related to the Syndrome he suffers (fear of open places, difficulties to get orientation, etc.) he finds his mother and stay with her for a while. His mother is living with Mr. Shear, the neighbour back at home. The reason why his father and her split. Problems arise between Chris and Mr. Shear as he doesn´t want to live with such an odd children. But her mother is not going to leave him anymore, so she decides to come back to Swindon, their place. They arrived at home and father is not there. Chris is still scared of him. When he arrives home, both parents start to argue and in the end the father leaves until Chris and Mum get a new place. Her mother gets finally a job and rents a room with kitchen where they both move and things are coming back to normal. Chris gets a dog from his father who proposes him to have a common project for Chris to trust him back again. Chris passes his Math examination and things seem to go better for everyone.

Opinion

Chris is a very special child, which one of his dreams is to be an astronaut because he likes tiny little spaces where he can be alone. He also likes be surrounded by machines and computers and loves the outer space. He´s a passionate of Math and enjoy taking level exams on this subject.
I find the book stressing at some points because obviously the children have mental problems that his parents seem not to take into account sometimes. His mother deals much better with him but still I find both are a bit irresponsible towards Chris. Chris is not able to feel any empathy for other's feelings and is not affected by anything that happens to others, even his parents. He´s not able to control his emotions, and starts to scream when he disagrees about something, sometimes he even stops eating. He doesn’t seem to have a balanced notion of what could be dangerous for him. When some situation is not bearable for him he uses his intellect to calm down (drawing, resolving Maths problems…). His teacher is the only one that seems to be able to dialogue with him because she really listens to him always. His parents loose patience continuously and seems they don´t understand fully what he´s going on in his mind. They think that telling lies about their lives to his child would be effective but it proves to be a complete failure. I couldn´t avoid feeling very sad about Chris many times during the reading.