Mark Haddon

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" By Mark Haddon
Vintage: 2003

I live in Korea and it is often hard to optain books in English. This is another book I found on the shelves in the university English library where I work and had read it when it first came out. I decided to re-read it and I am so glad I did. It stands out, in my mind, as a remarkable achievement in describing the mind of an autistic teenager. It gives the reader an unforgetable introduction to the world of autism since many of us do not have this background. It is believable and memorable.

It is a murder mystery and involves the death of a neighborhood dog with hints of Sherlock Holmes thrown in with the mysteries of the universe and mathmatical theories and a 15-year-old boy who is trying to understand a very strange and alien world the rest of us live in and think of as normal. One of the achievements this book does is to show the reader how strange this world can look to an autistic person.

Christopher discovers the dog, Wellington, speared through with a pitchfork. The owner of the dog sees this and calls the police. The police officer makes the mistake and thinks the autistic boy Christopher is to blame and grabs Christopher who can't stand to be touched and the boy hits the officer who then arrests the boy. This is the beginning of a series of misunderstandings.

Christopher decides to solve the murder and to write a book about it. Using cunning, his own brand of logic, the help of others and single-hearted bravery he does succeed and brings plenty of suspense and humor as well as warmth to this novel.

On more than one occasion, I wondered if the author was autistic because he discribes Christopher so well. Between the chapters, Christopher introduces the reader to his favorite things and to things he doesn't like. I did not understand the mathmatical puzzels and I don't think it is important to the book to do so.

This totally engaging novel is wonderful, easy to read and the logic would make Sherlock Holmes proud.

J.K Rowland

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" By J.K. Rowland
Bloomsbury: 1999

This book is the second out of the Harry Potter series and is a favorite of mine and another book I found on the shelves of the university's English library here in Korea. I also read it while I was waiting for my own departure from a regretable situation although not as bad as the fictional Potter's is but still bad enough because it was real. I have not gotten paid from my job and was very low on funds and had very little food.

The plot in this book is the same as the previous Harry Potter in that Harry is mistreated at home by the Dursleys who is his aunt and uncle. Rowland does a good job in discribing this family. It seems to me that the success of these books can be attributed to the way the author brings her characters to life. The stories are character-driven although the story or plot is a fantastic romp through a fantastic world in which a mistreated young man proves his worth and defeats not only evil in the guise of Lord Voltermort but the everyday evil of those who mistreat those who supposedly can't fight back. The readers care what happens to different characters who appear in these books and all who surround Harry.

As I stated in the last description of the first book, Harry does find love and acceptance in the wizarding world but like the real world there are good wizards and there are some who are not so good. Some say that muggles are people who do not see the magic in the world around them such as non-artists, those who can't see the use of poetry, literature and so on. Those who can such as poets, writers, artists can see the magic but are full of faults as all of us are and make mistakes and some can rise above this and become the heroes that we are all capable of being.

I am writing this review of a book I re-read years after I read it. It is also a time after I was able to get out of the situation I was in when I wrote this several months ago. Things are much better now. I have begun to see Korea as it really is and not from the point of a bad situation. I still don't understand what was happening then and probably will never will. I told someone that maybe it was a cultural misunderstanding. Who knows? What I do know is that I really enjoyed reading this book one more time.

J.K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" Scholastic Press: 1997

I read this book on a dare from a friend in 1997. He put a copy of the book on my desk where we both worked at the time and said: "I dare you to read it! You will love this book. Trust me on this."

My heart sank. I don't like the fantasy genre. I looked at the cover. It still did not interest me. I read that it was about a boy who went to a school for wizards and again it seemed dull. However, I really liked the man who put the book in front of me and wanted to keep his friendship. He was one of the few people in the workplace that did not carry a concealed knife and plunge it into his fellow workers' back. He was a decent man and still is. I took the book home on the weekend and finished it the next day. Ed was right. I did not regret it and introduced Harry Potter to my son and friends who became fans too.

Since then I have read all of the Harry Potter books and some of them more than once. I have bought all of the DVD's of the movies that were made of the books.

I now find myself living in a foreign country and was feeling frustrated in a culture that I didn't always understand and I found myself in a contract that seemed to be shifting beneath my feet. I reached out for some comfort and found it in the first volumn of the Harry Potter series that I found in the university library.

Reading it again did not disappoint me. I experienced the same feelings I had when I first read it. It is the story of a boy who was dealt a severe blow with the murder of his parents, was given to unfeeling and selfish relatives and finds his own place, acceptance and love among others. Reading it the second time was like the first, the putting on of a very comfortable cloak, not unlike Harry's invisability cloak in that others don't see it but its there all the same. In the end, Potter finds justice for himself and for others around him. What could be better than that?

I had to ask myself why this boy and this story attracted me in the way it did. Certainly there are plenty of fairy-tales in which Cinderellas find their Prince Charmings but we all know those stories rarely work out. We have to find our success ourselves as J.K. Rowling did for herself with her novels of Harry Potter. Maybe it is this combination of success and justice both real and fiction all of us crave in our lives.

Again, I remember the first time I read "Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone". I was working in a job that was enjoyable in that I helped people find employment and or training. It paid a decent wage and was protected by a strong and fair union. At the time we had medical insurance and Social Security although the medical benefits grew more and more expensive and more cumbersome to use. The difficulty I was experiencing then were a desperately unhappy supervisory staff.

During the time I was there, the supervisory staff were shouting, screaming at the regular staff and sometimes even the customers.The staff responded by yelling at each other. The union was in the office trying to understand what the problem was and especially with the ineffective stewards. Most of the problems were coming from the one manager who had serious problmes not unlike Lord Voltermort. Luckily, enough people filed job actions and won that forced the agency to forceably retire the manager. Unfortunately, he was replaced with someone who could not handle the huge ground-swell of problems that he left behind.

Some fortunate set of circumstances occured and I was able to go somewhere else as well as my friend. It took a long time to recover from that awful experience. I thought I did recover until I came here. It is not the same situation for I teach at a fine university without the same set of problems. However, one person who is not employed but in the mix of things has problems and is causing some difficulties with one special student. It has echoes of that past time.

When we read books, we sometimes incorporate what we are reading into our lives and what is going on with us. I have another "He who must not be named" in my life. I think each of us always have such people. In the book, Headmaster Dumbledore says Voltermort who is not alive cannot die. In latter books, Voltermort is spelled out, filled out as a boy who was not loved or wanted by his parents. I remember how awful my father was because he was unloved by his parents. Who knows how the Voltermort in my life got that way. I do know she is older than her husband or looks that way. Maybe in Korea, this is a serious problem.

Harry is not loved or at least he is told he is not by the Dursleys, but he finds out he is loved by others. His parents gave their lives for him. He finds mentors along the way. He finds secret talents and strengths. He finds friends. He discovers that he is not a bad person afterall but a good person. He builds strength within. This is something that Lord Voltermort never can do nor can his followers. They see doing evil as a short cut to feeling stronger and feeling better about themselves. It is a short cut but a short cut to prison.

Too often people don't win against adversity at least not during their lives. Murderers are not always caught, but karma is the cause and affect of our actions. There is justice but not on human terms. We just don't always see it. There were many times in my life that people were mean to me and I never knew what happened to them. In Harry Potter, we see it, experience it and feel his victories. No one can bring back those who suffer and die in real life but it is good to hear about the Harry Potters of this world. Harry Potter is only fiction, but it is fiction that makes us all feel good about our lives.