Eye Contact, by Cammie McGovern

Adam, a nine-year-old boy with autism, disappears into the woods with a 10-year-old girl from his special ed class. Adam is eventually found alive, but the girl has been murdered. The police try to get Adam to tell them what happened, but he has retreated into himself more than ever as he tries to make sense of what he's just experienced. Occasionally a clue is able to be pulled from the traumatized autistic boy, but to find the truth the entire community must decode clues found in the woods, in the schools, and in their own lives.

I started to relate the plot of this story to one of my co-workers. He stopped me before I got too far. "This isn't exactly an uplifting story, is it?" I hadn't even gotten to some of the more disturbing scenes. So no, this isn't a warm fuzzy, touchy feely kind of book, but it's not nearly as dark as the events of the book could have made it. There is some positive balance from the caring relationship between Adam and his mother, along with several other sets of oddly supportive relationships. One of the main themes of the book is that love and hope persist even through trials, regardless of whether the trials were created by fate or by our own poor choices. Sometimes that love and hope will only survive when we deliberately force it to.

It was an interesting book with some interesting messages. The autistic boy was portrayed very realistically. In spite of those positives, I'm not ecstatic over this one. There were too many loose ends in the plot, too many requests for the reader to suspend disbelief, too few characters without major problems. The writing style also seemed awkward to me. Sometimes you weren't sure if you were supposed to be in a character's head or watching the character from above. The verb tense kept inexplicably switching from past to present tense too.

3 Stars

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

Now here's an interesting book. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a work of fiction written as a first-person narrative, as if you were privy to the private writings of some real-world person. First-person narratives are not exactly new. From Dracula to Flowers for Algernon to Life of Pi, the technique has been used time and time again to give the work a more realistic feel. What makes this book unique is the character doing the narration, an autistic teenager named Christopher Boone.

Because he is afflicted with autism, Christopher is not your typical boy next door. He just doesn't "get" the social world, and probably won't catch the full meaning of what you say to him. He only understands the literal and the logical, and yet much of his reaction to the world around him is driven by superstition, and a very odd set of superstitions at that. He is easily overwhelmed by noise, crowds, or just about any other type of stimulation, which he copes with by curling up in a ball and moaning. And do not try to touch him.

When this severely challenged boy happens upon a dead dog with a pitchfork sticking out of it, he is understandably upset. When Christopher is then accused of killing the dog he is thrown into the role of a modern-day Sherlock Holmes with a partially malfunctioning brain. His quest to identify the dog's true murderer takes him far beyond his familiar world. For Christopher, that's a big deal.

He tells his tale as an autistic train of thought, complete with barely relevant details, lengthy tangents, and atypical conclusions. It's a fascinating view of the world through a different set of eyes. Some of the most dramatic moments in the book are scenes where Christopher's viewpoint and the reader's viewpoint are noticeably different. The ending is perhaps the strongest of those moments. Several people's lives have been turned completely upside down, but Christopher honestly believes everything is back to normal and OK again. To Christopher, things have been resolved. It's only the reader who realizes how unresolved and out of balance things still are. The dichotomy will leave you feeling satisfyingly unsettled.

I've got a couple of suggestions to help you enjoy this book. First, you've got to accept that the events of the book are nothing more than a context in which to watch Christopher. By the middle of the book the actual plot line has become predictable, but Christopher himself has become an absolutely enthralling character to observe. You often know what's going to happen next, but Christopher's reaction is much harder to guess.

Second, learn a little about autism before you read the book. You are much more likely to pick up on the subtleties that way. Based on what I've read in some negative reviews of this book, Christopher's oddities are just plain irritating unless you have some clue as to why he is the way he is. Someone who understands how difficult it is for an autistic individual to distinguish between the significant and the trivial, for example, will find that Christopher's detailed explanations of vaguely related topics are not only interesting in their own right, but also serve as character development. Readers without that understanding will wonder why the author just wasted two pages. A little background goes a long way toward enjoying the book and toward developing empathy for Christopher.

There are quite a few F-bombs scattered throughout the book. If that's something you care about, consider yourself warned.

It's natural to compare The Curious Incident with a book I mentioned earlier, the classic we all read in junior high, Flowers for Algernon. Both books are told through the eyes of a young man with cognitive defects. They share many common themes. But rest assured that these are two very different books. It's certainly possible that Mark Haddon was influenced by Algernon, but The Curious Incident cannot be remotely considered a copy of the former. Not only do the plots and writing styles differ significantly, but the two works have completely different core purposes. Algernon is primarily a social commentary, while The Curious Incident is primarily a character study.

I highly recommend this book. Be prepared to either love it or hate it.

4 Stars