Latest "Fast Read"

It really is a fast read, though my title refers to the wonderful new library service that lends brand new books for a week.
I'm talking about _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time_, a novel that wins points for most quirky title since _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_, but was WAY better (I found the latter a bore). What sets this short novel apart is the narrator: it's told from the point of view of an autistic adolescent boy. On the one hand it's a tour-de-force of sustained and controlled point of view, but it's so much more than that. It's one of those indescribable works that operate on your psyche for much longer than when you're immersed in them. If you have any experience of autism (and I have - my cousin's older son is autistic, and I've had a couple of students with mild cases) it's on the one hand enlightening and on the other heartbreaking because it give you such an insight into how the autistic mind works. One example: he says metaphors are "lies" because who's ever seen someone with an apple in his eye or knows anyone with actual skeletons in their cupboards? But similes are true; his simile of someone looking as if he had two white mice up his nose is true because that really is what he looks like, and you can picture it.
Great book. Read it; you won't be sorry.