Avril Moore goes on a journey ofthe heart as much as the head.FIFTEEN-year-old Christopher Boone has Asperger syndrome (AS) and although the style of the murder mystery he has written is at times idiosyncratic, if not peculiar, we come to see that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time follows the trajectory of the classic hero's journey.
In fact, high achievers such as W. B. Yeats, Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton are all speculated to have been affected by AS, while Bill Gates and Woody Allen also rate a mention on many of the internet's Asperger support sites.
According to the Asperger Syndrome Support Network, AS is a complex brain disorder that lies within the autism spectrum.
"Common characteristics for sufferers can include a lack of empathy with others, difficulty forming relationships, engaging in one-sided conversations and often becoming intensely absorbed with a special interest.
"People with AS can participate in repetitive activities and are resistant to change, coping best when life is predictable. They may appear non-compliant as they have difficulty taking direction and coping with negative feedback."
And yet Christopher's creator, author Mark Haddon, is quick to point out that after several years working with adults and children with a variety of physical and mental challenges he firmly believes that "people with Asperger are as diverse a group as Belgians or trumpet players or train drivers".
Of course, with Christopher it is his preoccupation with science and his obsession with having to find out who killed Wellington the dog that makes his perspective compelling.
By constructing the chapters of his novel in a system of prime numbers, using diagrams to illustrate specific points and deliberately varying the choice of fonts, Christopher attempts to "order" his story in much the same way he orders his world.
And it is Christopher's world that the author clearly wants his readers to experience first-hand. By allowing his character to narrate in first person, Haddon ingeniously presents us with Christopher's "voice", which is often disconcerting in its "no frills" reportage.
For example, we learn that people do not necessarily hold much interest for him and that while developing his novel he insists the central murder victim be a dog because, "they (are) faithful and honest, and some dogs (are) cleverer and more interesting than some people".
As a defiant Darwinist, this simple assertion from Christopher could serve as the main theme for his novel as he is adamant that people who believe in God fail to understand that as a species we will eventually evolve into a "cleverer animal" that will in turn "put human beings into a zoo".
Christopher's response to Reverend Peter's insistence that the dead are with God also reveals him to be a clear-thinking atheist: "And if heaven was on the other side of the black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't, or people would notice."
Faced with his mother's death, Christopher is fixated upon analysing the cause rather than reacting to the fact. He also relies on science as an explanation for his rabbit's death, and the idea of mortality in general.
Yet, in contrast, his thoughts about his mother's cremation are strangely moving and quite profound.
"The smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think there are molecules of Mother up there or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere."
Haddon's skill with revealing character through direct speech allows us to see how the world of Christopher and his often-discordant behaviour can challenge and frustrate his primary caregivers, in particular his parents.
Christopher's obsession with solving the murder of Wellington is at odds with his father's desperation for him to stay out of trouble. "It's a bloody dog, Christopher, a bloody dog."
Later, Christopher finds his father "sitting on the sofa watching snooker on the television and drinking whisky. There were tears coming out of his eyes."
Yet our sympathy for Christopher's father never detracts from nor diminishes our concern with the overwhelming stresses that Christopher must endure due to his AS.
It is worth noting how many times in his murder mystery he is compelled to digress into mathematical problem solving or the reconstruction of lists and timetables just so he can survive the apparent chaos of the world around him.
Paradoxically, it is learning that his mother is still alive that causes Christopher immense confusion and ultimately sets him on his "dangerous quest" to find her.
According to comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell in his seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
It is through Christopher's dogged adherence to the "truth" that he is able to confront his worst fears in a seemingly disorganised and dishonest world. His journey from Swindon to London is extraordinary because we are now so familiar with his terrors it is difficult to distinguish them from our own.
We recognise his every small act of bravery, every triumph, and by the time he is reunited with his mother we too feel we have survived an important rite of passage.
It is true that Christopher pays a heavy price and that his story is also one of lost innocence and yet somehow this loss has been replaced with an amplification of consciousness. We have all grown.
Through Christopher's empowerment, we are all forced to question our own existence and the manner in which we try to control our lives. By seeing the world though his eyes our own limitations and rigidity are illuminated and we realise, as Haddon so rightfully says, that there is a little bit of Christopher in all of us.