The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (28 page)

¹
I found this in a book when Mother took me into the library in town in 1996.
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²
This is not a
metaphor,
it is a
simile,
which means that it really did look like there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils, and if you make a picture in your head of a man with two very small mice hiding in his nostrils, you will know what the police inspector looked like. And a simile is not a lie, unless it is a bad simile.
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³
But I wouldn't have Shreddies and tea because they are both brown.
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⁴
Once I didn't talk to anyone for 5 weeks.
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⁵
When I was 6 Mother used to get me to drink strawberry-flavored slimming meals out of a measuring jug and we would have competitions to see how fast I could drink a quarter of a liter.
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⁶
People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are
not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say “I don't like you” unless that person has been horrible to you.
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⁷
Stupid things are things like emptying a jar of peanut butter onto the table in the kitchen and making it level with a knife so it covers all the table right to the edges, or burning things on the gas stove to see what happened to them, like my shoes or silver foil or sugar.
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⁸
I only did this once by borrowing the keys when she went into town on the bus, and I hadn't driven a car before and I was 8 years old and 5 months so I drove it into the wall, and the car isn't there anymore because Mother is dead.
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⁹
It is permitted to move the chairs and the table in the kitchen because that is different, but it makes me feel dizzy and sick if someone has moved the sofa and the chairs around in the living room or the dining room. Mother used to do this when she did the hoovering, so I made a special plan of where all the furniture was meant to be and did measurements and I put everything back in its proper place afterward and then I felt better. But since Mother died Father hasn't done any hoovering, so that is OK. And Mrs. Shears did the hoovering once but I did groaning and she shouted at Father and she never did it again.
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¹²
This is really true because I asked Siobhan what people thought about when they looked at things, and this is what she said.
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FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2008

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Underground logo, fabric designs, and line diagrams are reproduced with the kind permission of Transport for London. Kuoni advertisement reproduced with the kind permission of Kuoni Travel Ltd. A-level maths question reproduced with the kind permission of Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR). Every effort has been made to trace other copyright holders, and the publishers will be happy to correct mistakes or omissions in future editions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haddon, Mark.
                  The curious incident of the dog in the night-time : a novel / Mark Haddon.—1st ed.
                                    p. cm.
                  Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
                  [1. Autism—Fiction.         2. Savants (Savant syndrome)—Fiction.         3. England—Fiction.]         I. Title.
PZ7.H1165 Cu 2003
[Fic]—dc21 2002031355

Copyright © 2002 by Mark Haddon

www.vintagebooks.com

eISBN: 978-1-4000-7907-0

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