Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Garan Holcombe (Independent Scholar - Europe)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

, a memorable title which Mark Haddon took from a comment made by Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story

Silver Blaze,

represents a unique moment in modern fiction. Haddon’s novel may seem as if it fits neatly alongside those which deal with a child’s perspective on the darkest aspects of human behaviour, such as

What Maisie Knew,Flowers for Algernon

and

To Kill A Mockingbird

, but it is, above all, something entirely new. Haddon’s triumph is to have given us as unusual, convincing and strikingly alive a narrator as any in English literature. Christopher Boone is, in some ways, reminiscent of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole (they share a love of mundane detail) and J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield (in his defiant…

2309 words

Citation: Holcombe, Garan. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 September 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16877, accessed 19 March 2024.]

16877 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.