An outstanding novel! For me it worked in two special ways.
1. It makes us a fellow passenger in the life of Christopher Boone, his cognitive and corporeal space. The logic as he has come to define it, and how he attempts to live by it to a line. The way the danger of being run over a train escapes him till the last moment, and the consciousness stream that keeps him after Toby till the last moment is pure master class by Haddon. Haddon has gone on record to say that he didn't have any particular disorder in mind for Christopher, but about being an outsider, and being different.
2. It also gives a glimpse of how possibly a brilliant pure mathematician will see the logic in math, and how it assists her skill in reducing things to basic axioms that make up her discipline.
Christopher's brilliance in math, his logical thinking patterns, along with his ability, and sometimes his strong desire to shut out everything else from his world - the noise, other people - is the highlight of this book, and even the relationship difficulties of "the normal people" in this book, fall to the background. It makes the reader sync with his world, and his expectations to a large degree. The difference stops being a difference very soon into the novel, and the reader too expects things to happen, or the characters to fall into Christopher's rule set.
This book has won many award (Whitbread book of the year / Guardian Children's Fiction prize, to name a couple), but surprisingly stopped at the long list stage at the Booker nominations. I'd venture to say that it was Booker's loss.
And finally, one of those books which works best as a physical books, as against my usual reading of Kindle editions - my usual favourite.
Rating: *****
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