15 year old Christopher, who has an autistic spectrum disorder, investigates who murdered his neighbour's dog. In the process he unearths some family secrets.
I read this immediately after Elizabeth Moon's Speed of Dark, which is about an autistic adult in the near future. This one was very enjoyable, but quite different and, in my opinion, not as good. It is primarily about human relationships, rather than ethical questions and the nature of identity. While it was well done, it didn't grab me to the same extent as Moon's book.
It reads as a children's book, which is not a complaint but an observation on the first person narrator's voice and style of self-presentation. There are quirks in Christopher's comprehension of the world that result from his autism, but his lack of life skills and ability to interpret others' behaviour make him resemble a much younger child more than anything else, albeit one with precocious logical abilities. It's difficult to pin down what I mean by the narratorial style marking this as a children's book. I suppose it is partly that Christopher explains the familiar with naive, fresh perspective and seems always to have a conscious expectation of an audience. Most of the humour - and the pathos - comes from dramatic irony, since we understand the events he describes and their significance more fully than he does. The mathematical and logic problem interludes are interesting as factoids in their own right, but what Christopher finds in them that others do not (to the same extent) is not expressed, and I never really had the sense of walking in the character's shoes that Elizabeth Moon manages so well.
Copyright LibraryThing and/or members of LibraryThing, authors, publishers, libraries, cover designers, Amazon, Bol, Bruna, etc.
| static cookie not set
1 
I read this immediately after Elizabeth Moon's Speed of Dark, which is about an autistic adult in the near future. This one was very enjoyable, but quite different and, in my opinion, not as good. It is primarily about human relationships, rather than ethical questions and the nature of identity. While it was well done, it didn't grab me to the same extent as Moon's book.
It reads as a children's book, which is not a complaint but an observation on the first person narrator's voice and style of self-presentation. There are quirks in Christopher's comprehension of the world that result from his autism, but his lack of life skills and ability to interpret others' behaviour make him resemble a much younger child more than anything else, albeit one with precocious logical abilities. It's difficult to pin down what I mean by the narratorial style marking this as a children's book. I suppose it is partly that Christopher explains the familiar with naive, fresh perspective and seems always to have a conscious expectation of an audience. Most of the humour - and the pathos - comes from dramatic irony, since we understand the events he describes and their significance more fully than he does. The mathematical and logic problem interludes are interesting as factoids in their own right, but what Christopher finds in them that others do not (to the same extent) is not expressed, and I never really had the sense of walking in the character's shoes that Elizabeth Moon manages so well.