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Q &
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1. What research did you do into Autism and Behavioural problems
before writing this novel, is Christopher's character based on anyone
in particular?
After leaving university I spent several years working with adults
and children who had a variety of physical and mental handicaps
(as they were then known). Ever since that time I've been interested
in the subject of disability and mental illness. As a result, hardly
a week goes by without me reading an newspaper article or watching
a television documentary about schizophrenia or manic depression
or Tourette's… And hardly a month goes by without me meeting
yet another person who is the parent or grandparent of someone who
has been diagnosed as having Asperger's.
I also know a number of adults (men, mostly) who would almost certainly
be diagnosed with the syndrome if they had been born twenty, thirty,
forty years later. And that was the extent of my 'research'. I deliberately
didn't consult fat tomes on Asperger's or visit special schools
when I was working on the book because I wanted Christopher to work
as a human being and not as a clinical case study.
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Polly Collins, Glasgow |
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2. The book has been published
for adults and children simultaneously; did you set out to write a
book which would appeal to such a wide age range?
No. I wrote it to entertain myself (which is, I think, the motivation
behind any half-decent novel) in the hope that there would people
out there who shared my interests and obsessions. So the much-vaunted
'crossover appeal' came as a very pleasant surprise.
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Cathy Peterson, Watford |
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3. Have you received any positive feedback from people with
Aspergers Syndrome/ Autism, their families, or people who work with
them?
To be scrupulously honest… the book had one very bad review
from a young man with Asperger's who thought the book was bad, mainly
because Christopher wasn't like him or like any other people he
knew with Asperger's. But the review missed the point, I think.
People with Asperger's are as diverse a group as Belgians or trumpet
players or train drivers. There is no typical or representative
person with Asperger's. And to try and create one would have produced
a stereotype.
On the other hand I've been genuinely moved and completely taken
by surprise by the number of parents and grandparents of young people
with Asperger's who have written to tell me that the book rings
completely true for them.
I have been even more surprised to receive several invitations
to address academic conferences on Asperger's and Autism. Which
misses the point in a different way, I think. If Christopher seems
real it's because he's well-written not because I'm an expert in
the area. We live in an age obsessed with documentaries, with biographies,
with investigative journalism. We often forget that you can have
all the facts but be no nearer the truth. And this is what novels
are good at. A novel can put you inside another person's head and
give you an understanding of their life you could only get by moving
into their house for six months.
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Margaret Bentley, Chester |
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4. How did you come up with such and original idea for a novel?
It happened piece by piece and without any deliberate seeking after
originality or quirkiness. I began with the image of the dog stabbed
with the fork simply because I was searching for a vivid and gripping
way of starting a novel. I then realised that if you described it
in a flat, emotionless, neutral way it was also (with apologies
to all dog lovers) very funny. So I had the voice. Only after using
that voice for a few pages did I work out who it belonged to. Having
done that the difficult thing was to work out a believable way for
Christopher to construct a novel given that he is utterly unaware
of the reader's emotional responses to what he is writing. Having
Christopher simply copy his hero, Sherlock Holmes, by borrowing
the format of the murder mystery was the solution to this problem.
Finally, because I genuinely believed that very few people would
want to read a novel about a teenage boy with a disability living
in Swindon with his dad, I arranged the whole plot round the central
turning point (where we discover who killed Wellington and what
really happened to Christopher's mother) to make it as entertaining
as possible, hopefully dragging the reader up to a highest point
right in the middle, like a rollercoaster, then speeding them down
towards the conclusion.
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Peter Gall, Hastings |
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5. Whilst reading the book I found
myself laughing out loud, do you think some of the humour will be
lost on the books younger readers?
To say that certain parts of the book might be lost on younger readers
is, I think, to put it the wrong way round (if anything, the maths
is probably the best candidate for being lost on readers of all ages).
One of the happy accidents of having Christopher narrate the novel
entirely in his own voice is that he never tries to make the reader
react in one way or another. He simply explains what happens. As a
result people have reacted to the book in wildly different ways. Some
have wept their way through it. Some have thought it was charming
and amusing. In fact I was recently interviewed by an Australian journalist
who was shocked when I referred, casually, to 'the funny bits' (she
had wept much of the way through the book), saying that I was 'a strange,
strange man'.
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Joan Oald, Cheltenham |
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6. Do you feel that The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night Time has the potential to become
a cinematic success? Are there any plans to make a film and if so
how much input will you have in this?
Initially I though the novel would be impossible to film. Film, for
example, is relentlessly third person whereas the novel is doggedly
first person. When a camera enters a room we immediately see pretty
much everything. When Christopher enters a room he usually misses
(and therefore fails to mention) most of the things we would consider
important. As a result I was completely taken aback by the number
of film companies who were interested in buying the rights. In the
end the film was optioned by Heyday Films (who produced Harry Potter)
and a new company recently set up by Brad Grey (The Sopranos) and
Brad Pitt. And Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys and Wonder Boys)
has been contracted to write and direct. I still think it will be
a tall order but I've met Steve Kloves and the producers at Heyday
and I like and trust them, not least because they want to minimise
the sentiment and hang onto the maths and the science and the over-riding
oddness of Christopher's world.
As for my role in the project, I will very deliberately have none.
I've adapted other people's work for television (I recently wrote
the screenplay for the BBC adaptation of Raymond Briggs' Fungus
the Bogeyman) and I know that the job often involves radical surgery
which you would rather not perform on your own offspring. Besides,
I have other novels to write…
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Claire Powell, Taunton |
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7. How did you achieve such a unique understanding of the autistic
mind? Did you find it particularly challenging to write from the
viewpoint of an autistic protagonist?
As I've explained above I don't think I have a unique understanding
of the autistic mind. What I do have, I think, is many years' experience
of writing fiction which always involves getting inside the minds
of other people, be they autistic teenagers, Russian Counts, serial
killers or sweetshop owners.
As for writing from the viewpoint of an autistic protagonist…
once I'd found the voice I was immediately at home inside it (it
was the plot which proved the hardest puzzle). After all, Christopher
runs his life according to a small set of very strict rules. Once
I knew how to follow those rules the voice seemed to come naturally.
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PD Baines, Woking |
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8. What do you think it is about this novel which has made it
so popular?
I should preface this answer by saying that the popularity of the
novel was (and still is) a huge shock. Nevertheless… I think
the book gives readers access to a part of the world, and to a mind,
which would be completely inaccessible to most of us in real life.
And it makes that part of the world, that mind, seem comfortable
and reasonable and, paradoxically, not that strange after all (there
is, I think, a bit of Christopher in all of us).
Moreover, despite the weirdness of Christopher's story, his journey
is a universal one. We all order our lives. We all have rituals
and patterns and habits which make us feel safe and happy. And inevitably
at some point (when we lose a job, when someone close to us dies,
when we become seriously ill…) chaos shatters that order and
we have to fall back on whatever small skills we have at our disposal
to restore that order.
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Mary Potter, York |
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9. On completion of the book how
do you hope the reader will view Christopher's character and his disability?
Generally I feel that authors who have designs on readers should be
avoided like the plague. And one of the signs of a good novel, for
me, is the number of often contradictory reactions that readers have
to the book. On the other hand a novel (unlike a film or a play) simply
cannot work if it doesn't generate empathy ('Only connect,' as E M
Forster wrote). So if readers finish 'Curious Incident' without feeling
a little closer to Christopher and without some understanding of the
fact that he is 'different' rather than 'disabled' (on the last page
I think his parents are, in a way, far more disabled than he is) then
the book will, I think, have failed for them. |
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Carol O'Donnell, Milton Keynes |
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10. How important do you think
it was to enclose drawings in the text?
In a previous life I was an illustrator and I've been doodling on
my computer for many years (the illustrations in the novel are done
on-screen, mostly using Paintbox, the simple drawing programme that
comes with Windows, and therefore don't exist on paper). So when I
realised that this was the kind of illustration that Christopher might
use for 'his' book it was one of those glorious moments when something
on which you have stupidly wasted many months of valuable time suddenly
becomes useful. I think the book could have worked without them but
Christopher has a very graphic, visual imagination and the pictures
are a very efficient way of sharing that with the reader and a very
efficient way for Christopher to get across some of the complex things
he wants to say.
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T Parkin, Bradford |
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11. Do you have any plans to write more about Autism or to explore
any other forms of mental illness in your work?
I sincerely doubt I'll write another novel in which autism or Asperger's
figures so prominently, but my interest in disability and mental
illness means that the subject keeps cropping up. Earlier this year
I wrote a play for Radio 4 (Coming Down The Mountain) about two
teenage brothers, one of whom has Down's Syndrome. I'm planning
another radio play about manic depression. My next novel is about
a man going through a nervous breakdown (with 'funny bits'). And
an editor once pointed out that my children's book, The Real Porky
Philips could be read as a story of a psychotic episode. So, as
I occasionally say, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
is simply part of my ongoing Disability Boxed Set.
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Kate Willcox-Brown, Lancs |
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