《深夜小狗的神秘事件》

Christopher Boone is 15. He knows “all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number* up to 7,507.” He lives in Swindon with his father and Toby, his pet rat. He abhors all yellow and brown things, thinks he would make a good astronaut, and has never been further than the end of the road on his own until his discovery of the “murder” of his neighbor’s dog turns him into an amateur detective.

Boone has Asperger’s syndrome, though this is never specified. Mark Haddon’s study of the condition is superbly realized, but this is not simply a novel about disability. Haddon, rather like Daniel Keyes in his 1959 classic “Flowers for Algernon,” uses his narrator’s innocence as a means of commenting on the emotional and moral confusion in the lives of the adults around him.

Boone sees everything, remembers everything, but cannot prioritize — cannot sift out* what most of us regard as important. On the day he is told his mother is dead, he records his Scrabble score, and notes that supper was spaghetti with tomato sauce. But he isn’t callous* or indifferent. He can cope with facts, with concrete detail; emotions confuse and alarm him.

Haddon ingeniously uses Boone’s admiration for Sherlock Holmes to lead him out of this stasis, not to effect some miraculous “cure,” but so that a story can happen.

As he collects facts relating to the death of the dog, he unwittingly pieces together a jigsaw that reveals to the reader the lies, grief and evasions* of his parents’ lives.

The book is available at online bookstores like jd.com.

(SD-Agencies)