The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [ペーパーバック]

   この啓示的な小説の語り手は、15歳の自閉症の少年 Christopher Boone だ。うめくことと頭の中で数学の問題を解くことで気を落ちつけ、赤いものは食べるが黄色いものと茶色いものは食べず、触られると叫ぶ。変わっていると思うかもしれないが、彼にしてみれば他の人たちこそ謎だ。というのも、ほとんどの人が本能的に頭の中で他人の考えていることを推測するが、彼にはその能力がないからだ。隣家のプードルが何者かに殺され、その濡れ衣を着せられた Christopher は、お気に入りのキャラクターのひとりシャーロック・ホームズをまねて犯人を探そうと決意する。事件がやがて両親の離婚の秘密、さらには自分の居場所探しへとつながっていくなか、彼は推理によって、自分にとっては綴じられたままの本に等しい世間の感情的な複雑さを切り抜けていかざるをえなくなる。これが処女作となる Haddon の手の中で、Christopher は魅力的なケーススタディであり、何より、思いやりのある少年である。典型的なタイプのように完全に心を閉ざしているのではなく、普通の人間のように周囲の環境を振るい分けることができないために、感情の波にあまりに無防備に圧倒されてしまうのだ。

   Christopher が入り乱れる刺激を理解する方法はただ1つ、抽象的なパターンに当てはめることだ（「黄色い車が4台並んだ日は黒い日だ。誰にも口をきかないで読みかけの本の上に座って何も食べないで危ないことをしない日だ」）。想像力を欠く観察が、一種詩的な感性と辛辣な人物描写に拍車をかける。Christopher は「これは笑える本じゃない。ぼくはジョークは言えない。ジョークはわからないから」と言い張るが、この小説は感動的で皮肉なユーモアにあふれている。その結果、独特の語り口が胸に迫る、目を見張るような作品になっている。
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year. 'Outstanding...a stunningly good read' Observer. 'Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement...Wise and bleakly funny' Ian McEwan. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.

Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbors--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Haddon's novel is a startling performance. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. --Jack Illingworth, Amazon.ca
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

The title The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (or the curious incident of the dog in the night-time as it appears within the book) is an appropriate one for Mark Haddon's ingenious novel both because of its reference to that most obsessive and fact-obsessed of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, and because its lower-case letters indicate something important about its narrator.

Christopher is an intelligent youth who lives in the functional hinterland of autism--every day is an investigation for him because of all the aspects of human life that he does not quite get. When the dog next door is killed with a garden fork, Christopher becomes quietly persistent in his desire to find out what has happened and tugs away at the world around him until a lot of secrets unravel messily.

Haddon makes an intelligent stab at how it feels to, for example, not know how to read the faces of the people around you, to be perpetually spooked by certain colours and certain levels of noise, to hate being touched to the point of violent reaction. Life is difficult for the difficult and prickly Christopher in ways that he only partly understands; this avoids most of the obvious pitfalls of novels about disability because it demands that we respect--perhaps admire--him rather than pity him. --Roz Kaveney

Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Christopher can only make sense of the chaos of stimuli by imposing arbitrary patterns ("4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks"). His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. Though Christopher insists, "This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them," the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. The result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

An unusual detective story written from the perspective of an autistic boy.

"The book gave me that rare, greedy feeling of: this is so good I want to read it all at once but I mustn't or it will be over too soon. Haddon pulls off something extraordinary . . ." -- "The Observer"
"Always surprising and often hilarious." -- "The Globe and Mail"
"One of the most affecting things I've read in years . . . it's brilliant." -- "The Guardian"
"Mark Haddon's new novel comes with glowing endorsements from Ian McEwan and Oliver Sacks . . . For once, the pundits speak the truth." -- "The Economist"
"A stark, funny and original first novel . . . [with] one of the strangest and most convincing characters in recent fiction." -- "The New York Times Book Review"
"A brilliant autism novel has been overdue -- and this is it! The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Mark Haddon shows great insight into the autistic mind, and he brings his young narrator protagonist quite wonderfully to life. I found it very moving, very plausible -- and "very" funny." -- Oliver Sacks, author of Uncle Tungsten
"I have never read anything quite like Mark Haddon's funny and agonizingly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies; you won't want to lend yours out." -- Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
"The Curious Incident brims with imagination, empathy, and vision -- plus it's a lot of fun to read." -- Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season
"Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally disassociated mind is a superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy." -- Ian McEwan, author of Atonement

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

On my way to school I watch the cars going past the bus and remember their colours.

3 red cars in a row mean that it is going to be a Quite Good Day. 4 red cars mean that it is going to be a Good Day. 5 red cars mean that it is going to be a Super Good Day. And 4 yellow cars in a row mean that it is going to be a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks, because yellow is the colour of custard and double yellow lines and Yellow Fever which is a deadly disease.

Fifteen-year-old Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands science. What he can't understand are other human beings.

When he finds his neighbour's dog, Wellington, lying dead on a neighbour's lawn, he decides to track down the killer and write a murder mystery novel about it. In doing so, however, he uncovers other mysteries that threaten to bring his whole world crashing down around him.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an astonishing novel - funny, sad and utterly unputdownable.

5 red cars mean that it is going to be a Super Good Day

"Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy.”
-Ian McEwan, author of ATONEMENT and AMSTERDAM

"I have never read anything quite like Mark Haddon's funny and agonizingly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies; you wonπt want to lend yours out."
--Arthur Golden, author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

“The Curious Incident brims with imagination, empathy, and vision -- plus it's a lot of fun to read.”
-Myla Goldberg, author of BEE SEASON
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Mark Haddon is an author, illustrator and screenwriter who has written fifteen books for children and won two BAFTAs. He lives in Oxford.