curious dog essay

How to Analyse ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ for HSC English

Are you studying The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and in need of a thorough analysis? (Phew, that took a long time to type, we’re just going to call it The Curious Incident from now on, which you can do too in your essays after you have used the full name once!)

The Curious Incident is a fun read, but it can be really hard to analyse in depth. This article is going to give you everything you need to write a Band 6 essay on The Curious Incident!

You can also access a Band 6 sample paragraph and analysed examples by scrolling down.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Summary Characters in The Curious Incident Context of The Curious Incident Themes in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Connections to Module B Analysis of The Curious Incident

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Summary

The Curious Incident begins as a murder mystery story about Christopher Boone, who finds his neighbour’s dog murdered. The story is told through Christopher’s unique voice which reveals to the audience that Christopher lives with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, although the term is never used in the book).

Christopher’s neurodiversity leads to various social misunderstandings which hinder his investigation, however, his sense of logic and deductive reasoning aid his discovery of truth.

Halfway through, when Christopher solves the murder, the novel transforms into a bildungsroman in which Christopher must learn to overcome his fears. The values that Christopher learns along the way show Christopher what he is capable of in the future.

Access ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ Downloadable Sample Band 6 Paragraph and Analysed Examples!

Characters in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Christopher John Francis Boone The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Christopher is a highly intelligent but socially awkward 15-year-old boy with ASD. He is passionate about mathematics and has a talent for solving complex problems, but struggles with everyday tasks and social interactions. Christopher’s obsessive nature and literal thinking make him a unique and fascinating character.

Ed Boone Christopher’s father, who works as a heating engineer. Ed is a caring and protective father, but he also struggles to understand Christopher’s unique needs and challenges. He is often frustrated by his son’s behaviour and struggles to connect with him emotionally.

Judy Boone Christopher’s mother, who left the family when Christopher was young. Christopher idolizes his mother and has many questions about why she left. Her absence has left a deep emotional impact on Christopher and his family.

Siobhan Christopher’s special needs teacher at school. Siobhan is patient and understanding, and helps Christopher navigate the complexities of social interactions and emotions.

Mrs. Shears Christopher’s neighbour and the owner of the dog that is killed at the beginning of the novel. Mrs. Shears is a kind woman who is initially suspicious of Christopher’s behaviour, but eventually becomes a friend and ally.

Roger Shears Mrs. Shears’ boyfriend, who Christopher suspects of killing the dog. Roger is a mysterious and unsettling figure, and his relationship with Mrs. Shears adds another layer of complexity to the story.

Toby Christopher’s pet rat, who he loves dearly and cares for meticulously. Toby is an important source of comfort and stability for Christopher throughout the novel.

Context of The Curious Incident

After completing university at Merton College, Oxford, Mark Haddon took a job as a caretaker working with patients who had multiple sclerosis and severe autism. This work helped him to understand autism and subsequently develop the character of Christopher.

In an interview with Powell’s Books , Haddon states, “autism wasn’t a term that was even used much at the time, and only in retrospect do I realize that some of the people I worked with had autism, although they had it much more seriously than Christopher does.”

When asked whether Christopher has autism, Mark Haddon famously said that he set out to write a novel about a boy who was a mathematician, not a boy who was autistic. Certainly, many of Christopher’s behaviours place him on the spectrum of autism disorders but because Haddon never explicitly labels him, we’re encouraged simply to accept Christopher as himself.

Haddon uses Christopher’s unique outlook in order to highlight key truths about the nature of the world. He states in the same interview:

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people. But it’s also something that’s terribly, terribly ordinary. There are these extreme situations, but they’re happening somewhere in your street at this very moment. And that’s important to me, to find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.

Speaking of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, it is significant that Haddon sets his novel in Swindon, a relatively modern town in Wiltshire. This town is famous for being boring, planned and soulless – equivalent to how some Australians see Canberra. You might like to also think about how Mark Haddon represents the extraordinary within this banal town.  

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Themes

We’ve identified various themes below that can help spark some great ideas for your analysis of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:

The extraordinary in the ordinary While The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, you would be aware that Christopher is not “ordinary”. Instead of stigmatising Christopher’s high-functioning autism, it is celebrated.

The importance of truth and trust Christopher is unable to lies, propelling the story to interesting plot points and realisations. His honest perspective makes him observe the world from the outside, making for funny incidents. Christopher writes “”sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.”

Language Haddon critiques the form of the novel for being inaccessible, and essentially rewrites it in The Curious Incident ! This makes a humorous plot with funny dialogue, that is further abetted by Christopher’s deadpan and shameless character!

Difference, Tolerance and Love Humour aside, t he Curious Incident offers a brilliant critique to what we consider normal. We get to understand how illogical society’s orders and expectations, as well as the entire idea of “normal” is. As we read on, and begin to normalise Christopher’s point of view in our heads, we also embrace our quirks too.

Connections to Module B

Module B is all about making an interpretation of your text. This means that you should never just repeat the words of the question to create your thesis. It also means that your thesis should be unique and stand out.

It’s not enough to say, “Haddon’s novel is about difference.” Instead, you should choose a more interesting and specific thesis statement ! Consider focussing on a key idea such as truth or language, and make sure you’re always making an argument, rather than just talking about a theme!

Module B also asks you to understand how the characteristics of a text establish its distinctive qualities. Some distinctive qualities you might want to consider discussing include

• The murder mystery genre (and its subversion)
• The bildungsroman genre
• Christopher’s unique voice
• Structure, formatting, diagrams and images

How to Analyse The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in 3 Steps

Analysis is the core building block of any essay. If you don’t know how to analyse well, it doesn’t matter how good your argument is, you won’t be able to achieve the top marks! In this section we will walk you through step-by-step doing incredible analysis!

In the analysis below, we are going to be discussing how Christopher’s voice reveals the absurdity of human communication.

Step 1: Choose your example

There are a few things to look for when you are choosing an example to analyse. Below are some questions you can ask yourself:

• Does the example include a technique?
• Does the technique show a relevant theme?
• Is there another example with a stronger technique?

Check out our list of quotes from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time!

The paradoxical thing about choosing examples that the best example is not the example which states your idea the most clearly, but instead the example with a strong technique.

For example, if your paragraph is about the importance of love, and you find a quote which says “love is important”, that might seem like a good example, but you’re going to be left with nothing to actually analyse. You are better off choosing a quote which contains the same idea, but uses a metaphor or symbolism to express that idea.

That’s why we’ve chosen the quote below, referring to the diagram of facial expressions that Siobhan gives Christopher.

“I took it out when I didn’t understand what someone was saying.”

Step 2: Identify techniques

When trying to find a technique within your example, it’s not about finding the fanciest technique or just any old technique for that matter!

It’s about identifying a technique which will enable you to say something about your idea that’s interesting and can contribute to your argument and analysis.

That’s why we’ve chosen humour as a technique. The humour of the situation actually highlights to us as the audience the absurdity of human communication.

Step 3: Carry out your analysis 

There are two things to ask yourself when you are writing analysis

• Have I shown the effect of my technique and linked it to the idea?
• Have I progressed my argument in some way?

Good analysis involves using a technique to say something in addition to what the quote says.

Bad analysis is using a technique to restate what happened in the quote.

Bad analysis sounds something like this: “Therefore [technique] shows [your idea]”, without going into any real depth.

For the example above we have given the following analysis:

Haddon uses humour when Christopher says that he kept a piece of paper with the diagrams of faces in his pocket and “took it out when [he] didn’t understand what someone was saying.” We find this moment funny because a diagram could never accurately represent the intricacies of facial expression. The humour is therefore able to illuminate to us the deep complexities of how we communicate, revealing how difficult this communication would be to understand for those to whom it does not come naturally.

You should organise all of your analysis you do for each idea or argument into a TEE table, like the one below:

Need some help analysing other texts?

Check out other texts we’ve created guides for below:

• All the Light We Cannot See
• Lord of the Flies
• Much Ado About Nothing
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Rainbow’s End
• Burial Rites
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

By mark haddon, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time study guide.

Published in 2003, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time has won more than 17 literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, sold more than 10 million copies and grossed £14 million in 2004 alone.

Haddon admits that he began the novel wanting to find a 'gripping and vivid' image that would stick in the reader's head. It was only once he had thought of the image of the dog with a fork sticking out of it that the voice of the narrator came to him. Haddon explains that 'only after a few pages did I really start to ask, Who does the voice belong to? So Christopher came along, in fact, after the book had already got underway.' He describes how he cracked the puzzle of the novel by explaining that 'if Christopher were real he would find it very hard, if not impossible, to write a book. The one thing he cannot do is put himself in someone else's shoes, and the one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes...The answer I came up with is having him be a fan of Sherlock Holmes stories. That way, he doesn't have to put himself in the mind of a reader. He just has to say, I enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories and I'll try to do something similar to that.'

Haddon believes the book he had most in mind when he was writing The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . In a note about the novel, Haddon explains that Jane Austen was writing about boring people with limited lives and that were she alive today, she would be writing about chartered accountants in Welwyn Garden city. In Pride and Prejudice she writes about their lives with such empathy that they seem interesting, in the kind of book that her characters would read - the romantic novel. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time that is what Haddon says he was trying to do: 'to take a life that seemed horribly constrained, to write about it in the kind of book that the hero would read - a murder mystery - and hopefully show that if you viewed this life with sufficient imagination it would seem infinite.'

Haddon explains that writing about disability thows light on things that might otherwise seem ordinary: 'It isn't entirely comfortable' he explains, but it show us 'how little separates us from those we turn away from in the street. It's about how badly we communicate with one another.'

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

why do you think Christopher‘s dad is having this kind of reaction? Why would he care so much? If Christopher was poking around and other businesses?

Reaction to what in particular? Where in the story are you referring to?

List the problems caused by Christopher's condition.

Christopher fixates on specific topics. Numbers would be an example.

Christopher is unable to empathize.

Social Skills

The ability to discern the feelings of others.

Did you find story funny? Why?

This is asking for your opinion rather than mine. I think there is humor in this but it is dark and ironic humor.

Study Guide for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time study guide contains a biography of Mark Haddon, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is the story of an autistic boy who tries to solve a murder mystery. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

• Coming of Age in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• The Mark of Isolation in Adolescence
• The Importance of the Father in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• Realistic Infinitism in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• The Curious Relationship Between Facts and Truth in Mark Haddon's Novel

Lesson Plan for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

• Introduction

• Bradfield Senior College Library
• The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon
• Text and analysis

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon:Text and analysis

Books and downloadable chapters, bloom's literature online, journal articles, online videos, related material.

• Referencing

Bradfield links

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Library links

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Education links

• NSW Board of studies : Mark Haddon This site includes past HSC exam papers, the subject syllabus and notes from the marking centre.

• Bloom's literature : Mark Haddon The biographic entry for Mark Haddon from the Encyclopedia of contemporary writers and their work. more... less... TAFE NSW username and password required
• Bloom's literature : The curious incident of the dog in the night-time An authoritative summary of the text from the Encyclopedia of contemporary writers and their work. more... less... TAFE NSW username and password required
• Spark notes : The curious incident of the dog in the night-time This site provides a usefully concise guide for the text with sections on characters, ideas, quotes, and a chapter by chapter summary.
• Wikipedia : The curious incident of the dog in the night-time A short summary of the text with sections on plot and the theme of social disability.
• The Guardian : Autistic differences (book review) A review of Mark Haddon's novel, The curious incident of the dog in the night-time with a focus on its examination of Asperger's Syndrome.
• Book review : The curious incident of the dog in the night-time : Review by Mark Sarvas The reviewer discussess Mark Haddon's text and notes the "unique difficulties centering his story around a character whose illness prevents him from any meaningful, emotional growth".
• Cambridge : HSC Standard English Sample response Annotated sample essays on The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark haddon.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time can be read as a bildungsroman , a German term that means a coming-of-age story. In bildungsromans , the main character, who is often an adolescent, grows and learns about life over the course of the story, so that they’re more adult at the end than they were at the beginning. At the beginning of the book, Christopher is very much still a child, largely due…

Christopher has trouble understanding other people, so he usually fails to perceive nuances in people’s personalities, instead categorizing them in a certain way that dictates how he interacts with them. These categorizations often influence whether or not Christopher feels that he can trust certain people, and his social interactions depend almost entirely on whether or not he trusts the other person.

Whenever Christopher meets someone new, he assumes they’re untrustworthy until he can see some…

Truth, Love, and Safety

Christopher sees truth as an anchoring principle of the world, and values it almost the way other people might value right over wrong. If someone tells the truth, he can trust them, and if they lie, he fears them. However, Christopher also finds out that the truth can hurt as much as a lie. While he is constantly aware of his physical safety, carrying his knife in case someone tries to attack him and taking…

Logic vs. Emotion

Christopher , who is probably on the autism spectrum, struggles in interactions that depend on emotion or personality. Rather than sensing that someone is sad because of the tone of their voice, he often only perceives this emotion when the person starts crying and he can see physical evidence of their sadness.

Christopher best understands situations that he can explain logically rather than emotionally. He tries to be like the detective Sherlock Holmes , because…

Perspective and the Absurdity of the World

The actions of people on the autism spectrum often seem difficult to comprehend for people who are not autistic. However, telling the story from Christopher ’s perspective helps the reader understand his worldview and question the generally accepted rules of society.

Christopher sees society from a somewhat removed perspective. He doesn’t instinctively understand why people act in certain ways or why certain things are expected of him. As a result, he notices aspects of everyday…

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — The Themes Of Love And Safety In The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime

The Themes of Love and Safety in The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Nighttime

• Categories: Fiction Novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

About this sample

Words: 493 |

Published: May 31, 2021

Words: 493 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Boone, C. (2018). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Vintage.
• Boucher, A., & Toms, J. (2015). A social model analysis of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Disability Studies Quarterly, 35(1).
• Carroll, J., & Haddon, M. (2010). Conversations with Mark Haddon. Univ. Press of Mississippi.
• Elliott, J. (2019). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Novel of Autistic Experience. In Disability Literature and Literary Disability (pp. 95-116). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Haddon, M. (2003). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Jonathan Cape.
• Hilton, L. (2014). Making Sense of Christopher: Reading Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time as a Challenge to the Diagnostic Model of Asperger's Syndrome. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature, 52(3), 33-42.
• Kliewer, W. (2006). The curious reader: Exploring personal and textual responses to Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The Reading Teacher, 59(6), 554-564.
• Kovacs, D. (2012). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Journey into Christopher's Mind. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1(5), 62-71.
• Lant, K. (2009). Narrative Therapy and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The Family Journal, 17(4), 372-376.
• Madsen, L. M. (2011). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Beyond the Tick and the Blue. European Journal of English Studies, 15(1), 41-53.

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Introduction

Haddon’s techniques, works cited.

In literature, many authors have well used writing techniques that capture the reader and create a desire within to read their work. With this, novel authors have used variety of writing skills varying from dramatic openings to use of fictional techniques to convey their ideas. Others have also used distinctively interesting characters at the center of their literature. However, mark Haddon, in his novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- time”, uses distinctive techniques to make his work interesting and outstanding.

On top of the normal and expected techniques by most readers, he uses extraordinary ones capturing many readers in a distinctive way. This essay seeks to find out and explain the distinctive techniques used in the Haddon’s novel, which draw many readers into its world. It will also see the ways in which these techniques remain outstanding.

Mark Haddon can be termed as a well-gifted narrative author, with highly creative ways to capture readers into his work. He captures the reader from the beginning, makes him feel like he is playing part in the narrative, and finally leaves him delighted and encouraged to reread the narrative.

Haddon uses narrative in the first person is by itself a distinct technique that woos many readers (Mark). He puts the reader into the shoes of the narrator through the language he uses. On top of this, he uses a very distinct narrator who is a young boy of 15 years age who is autistic (Haddon 4).

Inasmuch as a novel is meant to entertain, Haddon opens the mind of the reader, insights and inform him about autistic children. He not only speaks about them but shows the reader how their brains work. He also uses the autistic person to portray this, which is very interesting and an outstanding technique. Information on autism is not familiar with many. The technique to mix entertainment with insights and information captures the reader to hold to the novel all through.

In the general view, he uses a child as the narrator of the story. He speaks through the mouth of this young boy, making the focus of the narrative change from Haddon to Christopher an autistic child. The voice of the child pulls the attention of the reader since it’s rare and appeals for more concern.

Inasmuch as many novels seek to portray the overcoming of a disability, Haddon uses an opposite technique (Mark). He uses a character with a disability and one who co-exists with it to the end. In other words, he uses a technique that makes the reader feel in a totally different world.

It separates the reader from the normal to the abnormal and unexpected. Everything that Christopher says has a lot of sense considering his condition. This reader’s effect receives an opposition from the people who surround Christopher who tend to ignore whatever he says (Haddon 110). This thus leads to drawing the reader to develop a curiosity that is maintained throughout the narrative.

He uses Asperger’s syndrome to support the point of using disability. This syndrome is basically a disorder representing disability. Haddon shows Christopher as one who has lost basic and important felling. He can only laugh and cry. This as a result interferes with the smooth relationship they had with his dad.

In addition he remains without a friend through the narrative. This therefore makes one feel emotional detachment of Christopher and tends to support his side, which always seems to lose throughout the narrative. On the other hand, Christopher’s condition touches on family relationships, which create an automatic attachment with the reader. Haddon therefore manages to carry the reader into the world of the novel and holds the reader to the end of the novel.

The title of the book (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- time) is enough to make the reader develop some curiosity. One would basically be carried by the fact it is a curious incident of a dog in the night time. Haddon does not use day time. The use of night time completely makes one have multiple guesses of what the incident would be.

In addition the use of dog and not a cow makes the reader have in mind million of incidents that a dog can be involved in at night. This lays a foundation from which many questions will be answered by reading the novel, thus capturing the reader’s curiosity into the world of the novel.

According to the pace of flow of events set at the beginning of the book, one would expect the murder mystery to be solved in the final pages. Haddon surprises the reader when such mystery is solved at an unexpected point. This gives time for the narrative to pick a higher pitch with raise in emotions and expands the restrictions of Christopher’s difficulty.

It is after the disclosure of mystery when more unexpected characters appear, offering more opposition to Christopher (Haddon 50). The reader hopes things get better for Christopher; they at this point get worse increasing the reader’s attention to the narrative.

Haddon also uses ‘detection’ theme to keep the reader parallel to the narrator thus holding the reader. The whole idea of the narrative is to detect the murder mystery. On the other hand the reader authentically tends to detect what Christopher will do, by reading his mind. Christopher all through believes something is wrong with the people surrounding him.

Haddon’s techniques remain outstanding to date since hardly are there authors using similar techniques. His techniques remain distinct. However, it is important to note that Haddon’s novel has not come to being through much research but through his experiences in life. It is more distinct when you write your own experience and no other people’s experience.

Mark Haddon story is distinct, moving and very entertaining and interesting. The techniques he uses in his work are rare and hardly found in other stories and narratives. No other author has shown such techniques as Haddon. The all work together to capture the reedier into the world the novel.

Moreover, even if not all, at least one of these techniques will make a reader desire to read the work. After beginning to read one gets tied into the narrative emotionally, thus feeling to hold throughout the narrative. Haddon avoids fulfilling the reader’s expectation through Christopher.

He makes sure that the reader plays part in the narrative. All these techniques empower each other thus drawing the reader into the novels world. More authors should endeavor to use such techniques since they not only capture many people, even those who are not avid readers, but also educate.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003. Print.

“Mark Haddon Interview.” DNA learning center . Cold Spring Habor Laboratory, n.d. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2018, June 21). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." IvyPanda , 21 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'. 21 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." June 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." June 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." June 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/.