{"product_id":"the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-nighttime-isbn-9781400032716","title":"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER •\u003c\/b\u003e A modern classic—both poignant and funny—about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.... Suspenseful and harrowing.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChristopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.\u003cb\u003eNamed One of America’s Best-Loved Novels: PBS’s \u003ci\u003eThe Great American Read\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gloriously eccentric and wonderfully intelligent.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Moving.... Think of \u003cb\u003eThe Sound and the Fury\u003c\/b\u003e crossed with \u003cb\u003eThe Catcher in the Rye\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand one of Oliver Sacks’s real-life stories.” —Michiko Kakutani, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is an amazing novel. An amazing book.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Dallas Morning News\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy.” —Ian McEwan, author of \u003cb\u003eAtonement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Brilliant.... Delightful.... Very moving, very plausible—and very funny.” —Oliver Sacks\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superb.... Bits of wisdom fairly leap off the page.” —\u003ci\u003eNewsday \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.... As suspenseful and harrowing as anything in Conan Doyle.” —Jay McInerney, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Extraordinarily moving, often blackly funny.... It is hard to think of anyone who would not be moved and delighted by this book.” —\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e, London\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Both clever and observant.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Full of whimsical surprises and tender humor.” —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“[Haddon] illuminates a core of suffering through the narrowly focused insights of a boy who hasn’t the words to describe emotional pain.” —\u003ci\u003eNew York Daily News\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Outstanding.... A stunningly good read.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Engrossing ... flawlessly imagined and deeply affecting.” —\u003ci\u003eTime Out New York\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A remarkable book from a writer with very special talent.” —\u003ci\u003eFort Worth Star-Telegram\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003cb\u003eThe Curious Incident\u003c\/b\u003e is the rare book that repays reading twice in quick succession.” —\u003ci\u003eDetroit Free Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Heart-in-the-mouth stuff, terrifying and moving. Haddon is to be congratulated for imagining a new kind of hero.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“This original and affecting novel is a triumph of empathy.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Haddon’s book illuminates the way one mind works so precisely, so humanely, that it reads like both an acutely observed case study and an artful exploration of a different ‘mystery’: the thoughts and feeling we share even with those very different from us.” —\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mark Haddon’s portrayal of an emotionally disassociated mind is a superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy.” —Ian McEwan, author of \u003ci\u003eAtonement\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"A murder mystery, a road atlas, a postmodern canvas of modern sensory overload, a coming-of-age journal and lastly a really affecting look at the grainy inconsistency of parental and romantic love and its failures.... In this striking first novel, Mark Haddon is both clever and observant, and the effect is vastly affecting.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Haddon’s gentle humor reminds us that facts don’t add up to a life, that we understand ourselves only through metaphor.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Beautifully written.... Heart-in-the-mouth stuff, terrifying and moving. Haddon is to be congratulated for imagining a new kind of hero, for the humbling instruction this warm and often funny novel offers and for showing that the best lives are lived where difference is cherished.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A detective story with a difference.... [Haddon] has given his unlikely hero a convincing voice–and the detective novel an interesting twist.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Think \u003cb\u003eHuck Finn\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Catcher in the Rye\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eor the early chapters of \u003cb\u003eDavid Copperfield\u003c\/b\u003e.\" —\u003ci\u003eHouston Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A tale full of cheeky surprises and tender humor.... A touching evolution.” —\u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal Sentinel\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Funny, sad and totally convincing.” —\u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"More so than precursors like \u003cb\u003eThe Sound and the Fury\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003cb\u003eFlowers for Algernon\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Curious Incident\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eis a radical experiment in empathy.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Village Voice\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the strangest and most convincing characters in recent fiction.” —\u003ci\u003eSlate \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I have never read anything quite like Mark Haddon’s funny and agonizingly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies; you won’t want to lend yours out.” —Arthur Golden, author of \u003cb\u003eMemoirs of a Geisha\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“At once funny and achingly sad, this thought-provoking debut may leave us wondering if our worn coping skills are really any better than Christopher’s.” —\u003ci\u003eThe News and Observer\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Filled with humor and pain, [\u003cb\u003eThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time\u003c\/b\u003e] verges on profundity.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Jose Mercury News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003cb\u003eThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Tim\u003c\/b\u003ee brims with imagination, empathy, and vision–plus it’s a lot of fun to read.” \u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eMyla Goldberg, author of \u003cb\u003eBee Season\u003c\/b\u003eMARK HADDON is the author of the bestselling novels \u003ci\u003eThe Red House \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e A Spot of Bother. \u003c\/i\u003eHis novel \u003ci\u003eThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time\u003c\/i\u003e won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award–winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry,\u003ci\u003e The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e, has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.\u003cb\u003e2.\u003c\/b\u003eIt was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI went through Mrs Shears’ gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and knelt beside the dog. I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs Shears who was our friend. She lived on the opposite side of the road, two houses to the left. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWellington was a poodle. Not one of the small poodles that have hairstyles but a big poodle. It had curly black fur, but when you got close you could see that the skin underneath the fur was a very pale yellow, like chicken.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3\u003c\/b\u003e.My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[sad face]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand I knew that it meant ‘sad,’ which is what I felt when I found the dead dog. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen she showed me this picture\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[smiley face] \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand I knew that it meant ‘happy’, like when I’m reading about the Apollo space missions, or when I am still awake at 3 am or 4 am in the morning and I can walk up and down the street and pretend that I am the only person in the whole world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen she drew some other pictures\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[various happy, sad, confused, surprised faces]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebut I was unable to say what these meant. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI got Siobhan to draw lots of these faces and then write down next to them exactly what they meant. I kept the piece the piece of paper in my pocket and took it out when I didn’t understand what someone was saying. But it was very difficult to decide which of the diagrams was most like the face they were making because people’s faces move very quickly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I told Siobhan that I was doing this, she got out a pencil and another piece of paper and said it probably made people feel very\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[confused face]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand then she laughed. So I tore the original piece of paper up and threw it away. And Siobhan apologised. And now if I don’t know what someone is saying I ask them what they mean or I walk away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e5.\u003c\/b\u003eI pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork-holes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs Shears running towards me from the patio. She was wearing pyjamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was shouting, \"What in fuck’s name have you done to my dog?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Let go of the dog,\" she shouted. \"Let go of the fucking dog for Christ’s sake.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 metres.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe bent down. I thought she was going to pick the dog up herself, but she didn’t. Perhaps she noticed how much blood there was and didn’t want to get dirty. Instead, she started screaming again. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e7.\u003c\/b\u003eThis is a murder mystery novel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSiobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, \"I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus\" . What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor do Siobhan or Mr Jeavons. I have asked them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSiobhan has long blonde hair and wears glasses which are made of green plastic. And Mr Jeavons smells of soap and wears brown shoes that have approximately 60 tiny circular holes in each of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I do like murder mystery novels. So I am writing a murder mystery novel. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a murder mystery novel someone has to work out who the murderer is and then catch them. It is a puzzle. If it is a good puzzle you can sometimes work out the answer before the end of the book.\u003cbr\u003eSiobhan said that the book should begin with something to grab people’s attention. That is why I started with the dog. I also started with the dog because it happened to me and I find it hard to imagine things which did not happen to me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSiobhan read the first page and said that it was different. She put this word into inverted commas by making the wiggly quotation sign with her first and second fingers. She said that it was usually people who were killed in murder mystery novels. I said that two dogs were killed in \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Hound of the Baskervilles\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e, the hound itself and James Mortimer’s spaniel, but Siobhan said they weren’t the victims of the murder, Sir Charles Baskerville was. She said that this was because readers cared more about people than dogs, so if a person was killed in the book readers would want to carry on reading. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said that I wanted to write about something real and I knew people who had died but I did not know any people who had been killed, except Edward’s father from school, Mr Paulson, and that was a gliding accident, not murder, and I didn’t really know him. I also said that I cared about dogs because they were faithful and honest, and some dogs were cleverer and more interesting than some people. Steve, for example, who comes to centre on Thursdays, needs help to eat his food and could not even fetch a stick. Siobhan asked me not to say this to Steve’s mother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e11.\u003c\/b\u003eThen the police arrived. I like the police. They have uniforms and numbers and you know what they are meant to be doing. There was a policewoman and a policeman. The policewoman had a little hole in her tights on her left ankle and a red scratch in the middle of the hole. The policeman had a big orange leaf stuck to the bottom of his shoe which was poking out from one side. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe policewoman put her arms round Mrs Shears and led her back towards the house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI lifted my head off the grass. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe policeman squatted down beside me and said, \"Would you like to tell me what’s going on here, young man?\".\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI sat up and said \"The dog is dead.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I’d got that far,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"I think someone killed the dog.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘How old are you?’ he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI replied, \"I am 15 years and 3 months and 2 days.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And what, precisely, were you doing in the garden?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\"I was holding the dog,’ I replied.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘And why were you holding the dog?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was a difficult question. It was something I wanted to do. I like dogs. It made me sad to see that the dog was dead. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI like policemen, too, and I wanted to answer the question properly, but the policeman did not give me enough time to work out the correct answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Why were you holding the dog?\" he asked again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I like dogs,\" I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Did you kill the dog?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"I did not kill the dog.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Is this your fork?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"No.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You seem very upset about this,\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes the slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.\u003cbr\u003eThe policeman said, ‘I am going to ask you once again…’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI didn’t like him touching me like this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd this is when I hit him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e13.\u003c\/b\u003eThis will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them. Here is a joke, as an example. It is one of Father’s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis face was drawn but the curtains were real.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI know why this is meant to be funny. I asked. It is because \u003ci\u003edrawn\u003c\/i\u003e has three meanings, and they are \u003cb\u003e1)\u003c\/b\u003e drawn with a pencil, \u003cb\u003e2)\u003c\/b\u003e exhausted, and \u003cb\u003e3)\u003c\/b\u003e pulled across a window, and meaning \u003cb\u003e1\u003c\/b\u003e refers to both the face and the curtains, meaning \u003cb\u003e2\u003c\/b\u003e refers only to the face, and meaning \u003cb\u003e3\u003c\/b\u003e refers only to the curtains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf I try to say the joke to myself, making the word mean the three different things at the same time, it is like hearing three different pieces of music at the same time which is uncomfortable and confusing and not nice like white noise. It is like three people trying to talk to you at the same time about different things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd that is why there are no jokes in this book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e17.\u003c\/b\u003eThe policeman looked at me for a while without speaking. Then he said, \"I am arresting you for assaulting a police officer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis made me feel a lot calmer because it is what policeman say on television and in films.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen he said, \"I strongly advise you to get into the back of the police car because if you try any of that monkey-business again, you little shit, I will seriously lose my rag. Is that understood?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI walked over to the police car which was parked just outside the gate. He opened the back door and I got inside. He climbed into the driver’s seat and made a call on his radio to the policewoman who was still inside the house. He said, \"The little bugger just had a pop at me, Kate. Can you hang on with Mrs S while I drop him off at the station? I’ll get Tony to swing by and pick you up.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd she said, \"Sure. I’ll catch you later.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe policeman said, \"Okey-doke,\" and we drove off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe police car smelt of hot plastic and aftershave and take-away chips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI watched the sky as we drove towards the town centre. It was a clear night and you could see the Milky Way. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn’t. Our galaxy is a huge disc of stars millions of light years across and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disc. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen you look in direction A, at 90º to the disc, you don’t see many stars. But when you look in direction B, you see lots more stars because you are looking into the main body of the galaxy, and because the galaxy is a disc you see a stripe of stars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then I thought about how, for a long time scientists were puzzled by the fact that the sky is dark at night, even though there are billions of stars in the universe and there must be stars in every direction you look, so that the sky should be full of starlight because there is very little in the way to stop the light reaching earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen they worked out that the universe was expanding, that the stars were all rushing away from one another after the Big Bang, and the further the stars were away from us the faster they were moving, some of them nearly as fast as the speed of light, which was why their light never reached us.\u003cbr\u003eI like this fact. It is something you can work out in your own mind just by looking at the sky above your head at night and thinking without having to ask anyone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExcept that no one will see this because there will be no people left on the earth to see it. They will probably have become extinct by then. And even if there are people still in existence they will not see it because the light will be so bright and hot that everyone will be burnt to death, even if they live in tunnels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e19.\u003c\/b\u003eChapters in books are usually given the cardinal numbers \u003cb\u003e1\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e2\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e3\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e4\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e5\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e6\u003c\/b\u003e and so on. But I have decided to give my chapters prime numbers \u003cb\u003e2\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e3\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e5\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e7\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e11\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003e13\u003c\/b\u003e and so on because I like prime numbers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is how you work out what prime numbers are.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFirst, you write down all the positive whole numbers in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910\u003cbr\u003e11121314151617181920\u003cbr\u003e21222324252627282930\u003cbr\u003e31323334353637383940\u003cbr\u003e414243444546474849\u003ci\u003eetc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 2. Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 3. Then you take away all the numbers that are multiples of 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and so on. The numbers that are left are the prime numbers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2357\u003cbr\u003e11131719\u003cbr\u003e2329\u003cbr\u003e3137\u003cbr\u003e414347\u003ci\u003eetc.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number.\u003cbr\u003ePrime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e23.\u003c\/b\u003eWhen I got to the police station they made me take the laces out of my shoes and empty my pockets at the front desk in case I had anything in them that I could use to kill myself or escape or attack a policeman with. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe sergeant behind the desk had very hairy hands and he had bitten his nails so much that they had bled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is what I had in my pockets:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1.\u003c\/b\u003e A Swiss Army Knife with 13 attachments including a wire-stripper and a saw and a toothpick and tweezers.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2.\u003c\/b\u003e A piece of string.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3.\u003c\/b\u003e A piece of a wooden puzzle which looked like this\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e4.\u003c\/b\u003e 3 pellets of rat food for Toby, my rat.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e5.\u003c\/b\u003e £1.47 (this was made up of a £1 coin, a 20p coin, two 10p coins, a 5p coin and a 2p coin)\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e6.\u003c\/b\u003e A red paperclip\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e7.\u003c\/b\u003e A key for the front door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was also wearing my watch and they wanted me to leave this at the desk as well but I said that I needed to keep my watch on because I needed to know exactly what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me I screamed, so they let me keep it on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey asked me if I had any family. I said I did. They asked me who my family was. I said it was Father, but Mother was dead. And I said it was also Uncle Terry but he was in Sunderland and he was Father’s brother, and it was my grandparents, too, but three of them were dead and Grandma Burton was in a home because she had senile dementia and thought that I was someone on television.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen they asked me for Father’s phone number.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI told them that he had two numbers, one for at home and one which was a mobile phone and I said both of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was nice in the police cell. It was almost a perfect cube, 2 metres long by 2 metres wide by 2 metres high. It contained approximately 8 cubic metres of air. It had a small window with bars and, on the opposite side, a metal door with a long, thin hatch near the floor for sliding trays of food into the cell and a sliding hatch higher up so that policemen could look in and check that prisoners hadn’t escaped or committed suicide. There was also a padded bench.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wondered how I would escape if I was in a story. It would be difficult because the only things I had were my clothes and my shoes which had no laces in them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI decided that my best plan would be to wait for a really sunny day and then use my glasses to focus the sunlight on a piece of my clothing and start a fire. I would then make my escape when they saw the smoke and took me out of the cell. And if they didn’t notice I would be able to wee on the clothes and put them out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wondered whether Mrs Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called \u003ci\u003eSlander\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e29.\u003c\/b\u003eI find people confusing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is for two main reasons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean \"I want to do sex with you\" and it can also mean \"I think that what you just said was very stupid.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSiobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breath out loudly through your nose it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said just before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors. These are examples of metaphors\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI laughed my socks off.\u003cbr\u003eHe was the apple of her eye.\u003cbr\u003eThey had a skeleton in the cupboard.\u003cbr\u003eWe had a real pig of a day.\u003cbr\u003eThe dog was stone dead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words \u003cb\u003emeta\u003c\/b\u003e (which means \u003ci\u003efrom one place to another\u003c\/i\u003e) and \u003cb\u003eferein\u003c\/b\u003e (which means \u003ci\u003eto carry\u003c\/i\u003e) and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy name is a metaphor. It means \u003ci\u003ecarrying Christ\u003c\/i\u003e and it comes from the Greek words \u003cb\u003ecristoV\u003c\/b\u003e (which means \u003ci\u003eJesus Christ\u003c\/i\u003e) and \u003cb\u003eferein\u003c\/b\u003e and it was the name given to St Christopher because he carried Jesus Christ across a river. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis makes you wonder` what he was called before he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn’t called anything because this is an apocryphal story which means that it is a lie, too. \u003cbr\u003eMother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e31.\u003c\/b\u003eIt was 1:12 am when Father arrived at the police station. I did not see him until 1:28 am but I knew he was there because I could hear him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was shouting, \"I want to see my son,\" and \"Why the hell is he locked up?\" and, \"Of course I’m bloody angry.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen I heard a policeman telling him to calm down. Then I heard nothing for a long while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt 1:28 am a policeman opened the door of the cell and told me that there was someone to see me.\u003cbr\u003eI stepped outside. Father was standing in the corridor. He held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. We do this because sometimes Father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people, so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the policeman told us to follow him down the corridor to another room. In the room was a table and three chairs. He told us to sit down on the far side of the table and he sat down on the other side. There was a tape recorder on the table and I asked whether I was going to be interviewed and he was going to record the interview.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"I don’t think there will be any need for that.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was an inspector. I could tell because he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He also had a very hairy nose. It looked as if there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"I have spoken to your father and he says that you didn’t mean to hit the policeman.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI didn’t say anything because this wasn’t a question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"Did you mean to hit the policeman?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"Yes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe squeezed his face and said, \"But you didn’t meant to hurt the policeman?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thought about this and said, \"No. I didn’t meant to hurt the policeman. I just wanted him to stop touching me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen he said, \"You know that it is wrong to hit a policeman, don’t you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said , \"I do.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was quiet for a few seconds, then he asked, \"Did you kill the dog, Christopher?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"I didn’t kill the dog.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"Do you know that it is wrong to lie to a policeman and that you can get into a very great deal of trouble if you do?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"Yes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"So, do you know who killed the dog?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"No.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, \"Are you telling the truth?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, \"Yes. I always tell the truth.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he said, \"Right. I am going to give you a caution.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI asked, \"Is that going to be on a piece of paper like a certificate I can keep?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe replied, \"No, a caution means that we are going to keep a record of what you did, that you hit a policeman but that it was an accident and that you didn’t mean to hurt the policeman.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said \"But it wasn’t an accident.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd Father said, \"Christopher, please.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe policeman closed his mouth and breathed out loudly through his nose and said, \"If you get into any more trouble we will take out this record and see that you have been given a caution and we will take things much more seriously. Do you understand what I’m saying?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said that I understood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen he said that we could go and he stood up and opened the door and we walked out into the corridor and back to the front desk where I picked up my Swiss Army Knife and my piece of string and the piece of the wooden puzzle and the 3 pellets of rat food for Toby and my £1.47 and the paperclip and my front door key which were all in a little plastic bag and we went out to Father’s car which was parked outside and we drove home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e37.\u003c\/b\u003eI do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I can’t tell lies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMother was a small person who smelt nice. And she sometimes wore a fleece with a zip down the front which was pink and it had a tiny label which said","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305155547365,"sku":"NP9781400032716","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400032716.jpg?v=1730759565","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-nighttime-isbn-9781400032716","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}