Mark Haddon, an established children’s author, has written a highly polished and engaging first novel for adults. The story is narrated by a fifteen year old boy with Asperger’s syndrome (similar to autism), who lives with his father in Swindon. On the face of it, we don’t seem to have the ingredients for an exciting story, but the adventure begins when the protagonist discovers his neighbour’s dog murdered and decides to find the killer.

Haddon’s skill is to balance our sympathy for the narrator with our alienation from him. He is a child, vulnerable and afraid and easily provoked, yet at the same time, he can be utterly self absorbed, ignorant of his parents’ frustrations and even cruel. There are no moral judgements because it is impossible to judge someone without any sense of guilt.

Haddon is an acute observer who shows us the perspective of someone who can only understand the most tangible experience - a kind of sensory empiricism. One particularly beautiful description of the sound of an approaching underground train: ‘like two swordsmen fighting’ is an example of how sensory experience is rendered material and real. The boy dislikes metaphor because it is a ‘lie’ to pretend something is actually what it is not. As a result, the his startling descriptions of inanimate objects, human behaviour and common custom show the world in an entirely new light. Clearly, Haddon’s training in clear, accessible language for children gives him an advantageous starting point.

Ultimately, the book regards a world where mathematical formulae seem safer than the irrationality of human behaviour (not something entirely exclusively felt by the mentally ill). The predictable laws of science are far easier to grasp than the passions of people, and hence less frightening. But at the same time, this book affirms for us the importance of such emotions and even if our narrator does not in the end appreciate this, the reader does.