the curious incedent of the dog in the night time?

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it's quite a good book but fails to explain that not all aspies are lilike that.!

cause my freind it thinks that all aspies are as bad as this boy and that all aspies have the same symtoms. i trid to explain that it's an "hidden" condition because it's quite hard to dignose as the symtoms change and vary in strength with each person. this all started with me metining my aspie test and he said "you don't have it, your not as bad as that boy in the book". btw if you haven't read it the symtoms the boy has:

inablity to express fealings
really good at maths
intrested in a subject to the point where non aspies think his "obssesed"(yup i'm like that)
hates people shouting at him(so like me)
hates people touching him non-firmly
hates too many questions in a short time(like me so much.


so has anyone else read the book?

Yes I read it and it made me sad, irregardless of where he was on the spectrum.

I want to read the Curious Incident just to see how accurately Mark Haddon portrays his AS character. I've read the London Eye Mystery, in which the main character (supposedly) has Asperger's but it's overdone, forced and his traits are more like those of Classical Autism. The author obviously hasn't done her research, or more likely, she spent one rainy afternoon looking at the Wikipedia article on Asperger's Syndrome.

I actually though from reading it that the boy in The Curious Incident was more autistic than Aspergers. I don't think the author has ever actually said it was about AS either. I certainly couldn't relate; the story was sweet and it was an entertaining read, I did enjoy it, but I don't think it was particularly realistically portrayed.

I read the book and thought the boy was more autistic than AS. I couldn't relate to him at all from I can remember. I am not anywhere close to being like him. I don't like people shouting at me either but aren't lot of people like that?

I remember reading that book, and I'm not anywhere as severe as that boy, and I never was.

If I remember correctly, the boy in that book goes to a special needs school, so you should assume that whatever side of the spectrum on, it's fairly severe.

I didn't like it though. It was a fair attempt for an NT, but he would have been better off writing from 3rd person.

EDIT: I was worse than that when I was a kid though. My parents didn't expect to be able to send me to a mainstream secondary school, and weren't going to if I didn't pass the 11+. That was mostly because I was quite violent, even a couple of years into secondary school.

I went to a regular school, and I didn't have nearly as many issues, as he did, at that age.

I read and enjoyed the book a while back, but also thought that it was more a portrayal of autism than asperger's.

The character actually reminded me a bit of my youngest sister who has William's syndrome. WS and autism have several traits in common.

I have AS and, although some of my issues are not as severe as the character in that book (noise), some things (faces, finding my way, funny omens) completely are. I'm not particularly talented at maths (I hate unreal numbers) - I'm talented at law. Why does that matter, really? When I 'read' it, I was looking for a good mystery story and I enjoyed it. It's fiction. I wasn't looking for an accurate portrayal of my life and brain, I just wanted an interesting story.

I've recommended it to others for the following reasons:
- The use of this character as a plot discovery device is interesting and unusual. I think it's good writing.
- It is a rather positive portrayal of someone with some serious impairments, after all he does make it to and around London on his own. He gets scared sometimes, but he makes it. Bad things don't happen just because he strayed out of his comfort zone.
- The book is not about "overcoming" AS/HFA. It's simply part of who he is. He takes A-levels, he believes he has a future career in science or maths.
- It provides an alternate way of seeing the world, different thought correlations. It can be hard for NT's to imagine what it is like in a non-NT head.
- The parents are definitely imperfect and handle some things badly, but this makes them human. Parents (NT or spectrum) of kids on the spectrum sometime need to be reminded that they are human, not saints or martyrs.

Maybe Haddon just overlapped AS and autism to create an interesting character.Which he did succeed in doing!
Even if he didn't portray things correctly, he did a better job then alot of other people at writing about it, so cheers to him.

Yeah, I read it a few years ago and I remember him being Autistic, not Asperger's. Does it actually say in the book which he is?

Reviews and descriptions of the book say that he has Asperger's. I have never read the book itself, though. To be honest, I shy away from extreme representations of AS because I find them upsetting - like a bunch of people making fun of the weird things I do or used to do.