Character Connection: Christopher Boone

Christopher Boone is the main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I’m going to cheat a little this week and throw a big chunk of my review at you because I said everything I wanted to say in it.

“Fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone is something of an autistic savant. He can work out amazingly complex math problems, yet if his own family touches him, it sets him into a screaming frenzy…. He knows that he’s different, he just doesn’t know how to be any other way. He can’t read people’s faces or body language. He says “I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.” He has certain triggers that severely hamper his ability to live what we would call a “normal” life. There’s the touching thing. And the body language thing. He loathes the colors yellow and brown. He can disappear inside himself for hours at a time. He loathes strangers. But throughout the book, we watch Christopher make progress and grow, and even see his own perceptions of himself, his abilities, and his goals change. These changes would seem small in another character, but we see inside Christopher’s head so well that we’re right there with him, cheering him on as he makes another gigantic step in his personal development.”

Who did you connect with this week? Link your post on Mr. Linky, then be sure to go check out the other Character Connections!

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them.

I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless.

Be sure to post the book’s title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters.

Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday.

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