zondag 31 oktober 2004

Mark Haddon - The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime



This book is great! I heard so much about it that I was dying to read it. Well, it defenitely was worth waiting for.

Christopher is so cute (if that is the correct word in English, can´t find my dictionary at the moment, the Dutch word is: ontroerend), but I can imagine that living with such a child is extremely exhausting.

I loved the numbering of the chapters (in prime numbers). The strange things about food, colours, numbers. Trying to get everyting into some kind of logical scheme, makes Christopher feel safe: schemes are something he can relate to. Emotions aren´t.

Some of my favourite quotes:
Christopher has problems reading face and body language. He has his teacher draw facial expressions for him on a piece of paper to help him understand other people´s emotions:
´I got Siobhan to draw lot of these faces and then write down next to them exactly wat they meant. I kept the piece of paper in my pocket and took it out when I didn´t understand what someone was saying. But is was very difficult to decide which of the diagrams was most like the face they were making because people´s face move very quickly.´
´I could tell that he was angry because he was shouting´

Christopher is a science-believer. While watching a video on life in the deepest parts of the oceans:
´I like this bit because it shows you that there is always something new that science can discover, and all the fats that you take for granted can be completely wrong.´
And a few pages later:
´Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn´t mean there isn´t an answer to them. It´s just that scientists haven´t found the answer yet.´

His love for timetables:
´Because time is not like space. And when you put something down somewhere (...), you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don´t have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist (...). And a timetable is a map of time, (...). And this is why I like timetables, because they make sure you don´t get lost in time.

Geen opmerkingen: