Gale - A Study Guide for Mark Haddons The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

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Mark Haddon

2003

Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was a runaway best seller when it was published in 2003. The novel follows Christopher Boone, a fifteen-year-old boy with cognitive and behavioral difficulties, who discovers his neighbor's dog dead on the front lawn. Christopher becomes obsessed with discovering who killed the dog. He decides to write a detective story along the lines of those of his favorite writer, Sherlock Holmes, a quest that results in his discovery that his mother is not dead and that his father has been lying to him about her absence for the past two years. He also discovers that his father killed the dog.

All of this information so upsets Christopher that he becomes terrified of his father and decides to run away to London to find his mother. His harrowing journey to London is documented in frightening detail. For a boy who is easily overstimulated by external information, navigating the train station, evading policemen, and then venturing into the terrifying London Underground are nearly more than he can handle, but Christopher prevails and is reunited with his mother. When his mother's boyfriend is unwilling to take him in, his mother returns home with Christopher and cares for him as he slowly reconciles with his father. Christopher also passes his A Level (Advanced Level) examination in math, which qualifies him to apply to university. It is a story of triumph over adversity.

The book remained at the top of the bestseller lists in the United Kingdom and United States for many months, and it won the prestigious Whitbread Prize (now called the Costa Award) and Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It has been made into a stage play, which won seven Olivier Awards in the United Kingdom and five Tony Awards in the United States. Haddon continues to write and has published several more books.

Haddon was born on September 26, 1962, in Northampton, England. He holds a B.A. from the University of Oxford and an M.A. from Edinburgh University. He is married to Sos Eltis, a scholar who teaches Victorian, modern, and contemporary literature at the University of Oxford. They have two sons and live in Oxford.

Haddon held a number of jobs early in his career, including working with children and adults who had physical and mental disabilities. As well as writing, Haddon has had a long career as an artist, cartoonist, and illustrator, working for magazines and newspapers including the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Sunday Telegraph. In 1987 he published his first children's book, Gilbert's Gobstopper, and began a career as an author and illustrator of children's books. He published sixteen children's books before The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, including two series, the Agent Z books and a series about baby dinosaurs. He also wrote for several children's television series and won a Royal Television Society Award and two BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was his first book for adults, although it was published simultaneously by two imprints, one for adult readers and one for young-adult readers. Published in 2003, it became a best seller and won seventeen awards, including the prestigious Whitbread Prize and Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Haddon caused some controversy when he refused to meet the queen after winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is a staunch Republican, which in this case means that he is a person who advocates replacing the monarchy with a republic, not that he is a member of the Republican Party of the United States. Haddon told Hadley Freeman of the Guardian,

I just thought, if you write a book saying that no one is worth less than anyone else, then it makes you a great hypocrite to get involved in this institution saying that one family is superior to everyone else.

The novel was adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens, and the play was directed by Marianne Eliott. It opened at the National Theatre in London on August 2, 2012, and at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York in October 2014. The play has also been staged in Toronto and Amsterdam and has toured the United Kingdom and Ireland. It won seven Olivier Awards in the United Kingdom and five Tony Awards in the United States. Haddon has subsequently published A Spot of Bother (2006), The Red House (2012), and The Pier Falls and Other Stories (2016).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is divided into chapters that are not in typical numerical order but rather are named after prime numbers. The book follows a character named Christopher Boone as he attempts to figure out who killed his neighbor's dog. Christopher seems to have problems with behavioral and sensory cognition, although he is exceptionally bright, especially when it comes to math and physics. The book is set in an English town called Swindon, which is between the larger cities of Bristol and Reading and is north of London. The chapters alternate between the present tense action and Christopher's recollection of past events.