I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. Some are told from the first person, and some from the third, and they move around quite a bit in time. This means that it takes a while to figure out who is who in each story, and how the persons are linked. In the end it comes out to a complete picture of a woman's life.

The loss of a child is a shocking, life-altering event, especially when she disappears from beneath your very gaze. One moment seven-year-old Celia is balancing atop a stone wall--taking in the sunshine and breathing the fragrant air--and in the blink of an eye she has vanished from Christopher's sight. Christopher is in the midst of showing their historic home to some tourists while Janet is off at orchestra practice. He thinks Celia is probably playing somewhere in the yard as he passes the window facing the stone wall, and he continues to give the grand tour of the recent restorations to their vintage home. Close to a decade of searching does not return Celia, and Christopher and Janet are left with the fragments of a life they cannot piece together. Perhaps Celia is not dead and she resides in another dimension that defies time and spatial probability as we know it, or maybe Christopher is mad with inconsolable grief.

As an author who discerns and tells about life in fictional format, Irving is bested by few of his contemporaries; as one who draws strong, sympathetic, and real characters, particularly female ones, he is close to reaching the standards of Reynolds Price, who is arguably the best. Ruth Cole bears emotional scars from childhood and young womanhood that are, ironically, the impetus behind her distinguished writing career. The novel is divided into three parts, each a pivotal period in Ruth's life. The summer of 1958 finds four-year-old Ruth, who is the daughter of a separated couple, Ted and Marion Cole (Ted a well-known writer of children's books), coming in on her mother while she is engaged in sex with Eddie O'Hara, Ted's 16-year-old assistant. Ruth understands that her mother is devoted, not to her or even to Eddie, but to her two brothers, both of whom died before Ruth's birth. Photos of the boys are her mother's hallowed possessions.
The second section is framed by the year 1990, as Ruth, now in her thirties, enjoys critical and popular regard as a novelist, and where she witnesses a murder of a window prostitute in Amsterdam. Still messy, though, are her relations with the opposite sex.

The third section takes place just five years later, and Ruth finds her life enriched by love. As one excellent scene follows another, Irving portrays a depiction of overcoming familial and sexual dysfunction.

This is not my favorite Irving novel (A Prayer for Owen Meany), but it is still typically Irving and excellent reading.

i'm not saying it's not good. i'm just saying i couldn't finish it. this autistic child behaved nothing like the autistic children i worked with in my caretaker days, but i've heard the exact opposite from other people with the same background. so who knows? just couldn't get into it.

Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.

Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington's owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves--against the objection of his father and neighbors--to discover just who has murdered Wellington. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result--quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number--is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I actually thought this novel was just ok, it was a good read but I felt it was a little slow at times.

"And it means that sometimes things are so complicated that it is impossible to predict what they are going to do next, but they are only obeying really simple rules. And it means that sometimes a whole population of frogs, or worms, or people, can die for no reason whatsoever, just because that is the way the numbers work."

A really simple novel, yet surprisingly touching and brilliantly written. I cannot comment on how accurate a description of autism it is, but I loved that the main character, Christopher, makes life and existence so logical and simple. It's hard to argue with his reasonings!

Should be on everyone's TO READ list!

Haddon's mystery novel about an autistic teen who attempts to solve the mystery of a dead neighbor's dog funny and genuine. An original voice imbued with emotion and honesty. As someone with a brother who was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (the type of autism Haddon's character has) at an early age, the book hit home in more ways than one.

The ingredients of a family nightmare are turned into comedy in this would-be detective story. It is told from the point-of-view of an autistic 15 year old & his take on the people who surround him & the events of his daily life as he tries to solve a mystery & uncovers the unexpected.

With the subject matter: animal cruelty, autism, unfaithfulness, parental alienation, teen angst and more ....this story could have been exploitive, depressing, and troubling. Instead, I found it warm, funny, instructive, and very touching. Well done!

Darkly funny and surprisingly moving book. Our unlikely narrator is Christopher, a boy with Asperger's, a form of autism. This book is a credible mystery story that can stand up proud; but as much as anything, it was an exercise in seeing the world through the eyes of a boy who's brain works so differently than yours or mine. Haddon never cheats with the 1st-person narrative, and so there's this deliciously frustrating sense that if we were just there in person, we would be able to look around the corner and recognize what Christopher is incapable of recognizing. We could see what was coming and somehow protect Christopher from it. But Christopher cannot bend his mind this way, and so we are trapped in the back seat with him at the wheel. This allows the story to surprise us at every twist and turn, and break our hearts a little along the way.

Okay, so this book is a good example of why I tend not to read popular books.

Yes, writing from the viewpoint of an autistic child was interesting - for about the first 30 pages. After that it just felt like a children's book. The story itself is not very powerful, it's really the writing style. I think the same effect of "Oh, wow, that's how autistic people see the world?" could have been accomplished in a short story. Maybe that sounds callous, but I really don't see the need for the entire book.

Loved the book...view from the autistic boy's eyes is amazing and sad at the same time