When he has time off from marathon canoeing ‘‘and other masochistic sports activities’’, Mark Haddon is a poet, painter, cartoonist and writer of children’s books (Nestle Smarties prize shortlisted), radio plays and TV scripts (winner of the Royal Television Society Best Children’s Drama). The book under review, translated worldwide and published twice over for its genre-crossing potential, has already won three prizes (including Best Audio Book of the Year) and been on the Booker long list. And now that film rights have been sold jointly to Warner Bros/Brad Pitt/Heyday and the Harry Potter screenplay-writer roped in as director, there’s enough buzz to keep Haddon enjoy that rarest of rare things — ‘‘a super good day’’. This, in case you’re shamelessly out of touch with the burgeoning Haddon fan club, is something that happens only when his protagonist Christopher Boone sees five red cars in a row. Not, you will agree, something to be taken lightly or (horror, horror) confused with that other thing, ‘‘a black day’’ — four yellow cars in a row. A garden fork rammed inside a poodle forms the hook for this dodgiest of murder mysteries, with Sherlock Holmes its hopeless model (3 clues + 3 red herrings from The Hound Of Baskervilles grace this earnest primer), and Swindon its setting. Maps, lists, diagrams, arcane trivia, Greek etymology, maths formulas, puzzles, T-shirt slogans and road signs are its tools, prime numbers his chapters. Maps, lists, diagrams, Greek etymology, road signs, T-shirt slogans are Haddon’s tools, prime numbers his chapters Fifteen-year-old Christopher, the unlikely problem-solver, knows all the country capitals of the world and every power of 2 till the 45th. He can tell the precise measurements of any room he is in, how else 251 times 864 can be solved, how the Orion constellation can just as well be called “the bunch of grapes”, or look like a lady with an umbrella who is waving. He dreams of becoming a scientist. Yet he is pathologically unable to lie, break promises, understand jokes, eat anything yellow or brown, bear to be touched or understand facial expressions between Happy and Sad. When disoriented, he presses CTRL+ALT+ DEL, when remembering, he presses SEARCH and REW. Though the word ‘‘autistic’’ isn’t mentioned even once, we conclude that he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. Awed parent-readers have testified to the uncanny authenticity of this inside-Rain Man’s-head portrayal. The constraints of being Christopher are many, the consequences confusing. His matter-of-fact clarifications of every bizarre personal quirk, his solemnly dogged attempts at being a detective, and the blinding logic of his naivete make him unwittingly funny. Surely no other narrator has drawn knives at well-meaning strangers, lain on the floor with his hands over his ears, screamed in public places, repeatedly cross-examined harmless neighbours, caused the breakup of his family, been suspicious of his deeply caring father, calmed himself with quadratic equations, and remained so heart-tugging in his purity and bewilderment. There is a refreshing absence of that temptation for cutesie stereotyping which thousands of books annually pegged to the YA (young adult) market succumb to. The result is a linear, childlike, believable, darkly comic coming-of-age book. Our lives certainly would have been less rich if we hadn’t wondered over the Monty Hall conundrum, what Christopher was called before he carried Christ over the river, why this name is a metaphor, why the word metaphor itself is a metaphor, how Occam’s razor is not a razor but a law. We end up with the larger picture. Yet Christopher (who bequeaths the facts to us, reaches London, finds his ‘‘dead’’ mother, sits for his A levels, and writes this book) lacks emotional awareness till the end. It is this pokerfaced telling that makes it so poignant.
