The Curious Incident Of Te Dog Inthe Night Time

The behaviors and demands of adults are mysterious and confusing to most children. To 15-year old Christopher Boone, the narrator in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, it's completely beyond the realm of his understanding. Christopher is an autistic savant and while he's a whiz at math and science, human emotions are particularly complex for him. As the novel opens, he tells us "I know all of the countries of the world and their capital cities, and every prime number up to 7,057." He finds a neighbor's dog, named Wellington, murdered and decides to write about it. With the help of his teacher, Siobhan, he decides to write a book about his attempt to solve this mystery. It's a search for information that will ultimately upset his carefully constructed world.

Christopher lives alone with his father after his mother died from a heart attack two years earlier. He never got to visit her at the hospital, but this doesn't bother him since he doesn't like strange places or people he doesn't know. If people touch him, he will hit them. If his senses become overloaded or his brain too confused, he will curl up in a ball and groan loudly, perhaps for hours at a time. Becoming angry with him just makes it worse. He hates the colors yellow and brown. His world needs order and precision. He will do math problems in his head for hours just to pass the time or distract him from an unpleasant situation. As he begins his investigation into Wellington's death, he assures us that everything he will tell us is true:

I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I can't tell lies.