內容簡介
Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year 'Outstanding...a stunningly good read' Observer 'Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement... Wise and bleakly funny' Ian McEwan The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.
作者簡介
Mark Haddon is an author, illustrator and screenwriter who has written fifteen books for children and won two BAFTAs. He lives in Oxford.
內頁插圖
精彩書評
"I have never read anything quite like Mark Haddon's funny and agonizingly honest book, or encountered a narrator more vivid and memorable. I advise you to buy two copies; you won't want to lend yours out."
--Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
"A delightful and brilliant book. Very moving, very plausible and very funny."
--Oliver Sacks
"Brilliantly empathetic. Believe the hype: a brilliant, heart-warming book."
--Scotsman
"A remarkable book. An impressive achievement and a rewarding read."
--Time Out
精彩書摘
2. It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.
I went through Mrs. Shears's gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and knelt beside the dog. I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm.
The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs. Shears, who was our friend. She lived on the opposite side of the road, two houses to the left.
Wellington was a poodle. Not one of the small poodles that have hairstyles but a big poodle. It had curly black fur, but when you got close you could see that the skin underneath the fur was a very pale yellow, like chicken.
I stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why.
3. My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.
Eight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture and I knew that it meant "sad," which is what I felt when I found the dead dog.
Then she showed me this picture and I knew that it meant "happy," like when I'm reading about the Apollo space missions, or when I am still awake at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in the morning and I can walk up and down the street and pretend that I am the only person in the whole world.
Then she drew some other pictures but I was unable to say what these meant.
I got Siobhan to draw lots of these faces and then write down next to them exactly what they meant. I kept the piece of paper in my pocket and took it out when I didn't understand what someone was saying. But it was very difficult to decide which of the diagrams was most like the face they were making because people's faces move very quickly.
When I told Siobhan that I was doing this, she got out a pencil and another piece of paper and said it probably made people feel very and then she laughed. So I tore the original piece of paper up and threw it away. And Siobhan apologized. And now if I don't know what someone is saying, I ask them what they mean or I walk away.
5. I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork holes.
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.
I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running toward me from the patio. She was wearing pajamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on.
She was shouting, "What in fuck's name have you done to my dog?"
I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen.
"Let go of the dog," she shouted. "Let go of the fucking dog for Christ's sake."
I put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 meters.
She bent down. I thought she was going to pick the dog up herself, but she didn't. Perhaps she noticed how much blood there was and didn't want to get dirty. Instead she started screaming again.
I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice.
7. This is a murder mystery novel.
Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, "I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus."1 What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.
Siobhan has long blond hair and wears glasses which are made of green plastic. And Mr. Jeavons smells of soap and wears brown shoes that have approximately 60 tiny circular holes in each of them.
But I do like murder mystery novels. So I am writing a murder mystery novel.
In a murder mystery novel someone has to work out who the murderer is and then catch them. It is a puzzle. If it is a good puzzle you can sometimes work out the answer before the end of the book.
Siobhan said that the book should begin with something to grab people's attention. That is why I started with the dog. I also started with the dog because it happened to me and I find it hard to imagine things which did not happen to me.
Siobhan read the first page and said that it was different. She put this word into inverted commas by making the wiggly quotation sign with her first and second fingers. She said that it was usually people who were killed in murder mystery novels. I said that two dogs were killed in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the hound itself and James Mortimer's spaniel, but Siobhan said they weren't the victims of the murder, Sir Charles Baskerville was. She said that this was because readers cared more about people than dogs, so if a person was killed in a book, readers would want to carry on reading.
I said that I wanted to write about something real and I knew people who had died but I did not know any people who had been killed, except Mr. Paulson, Edward's father from school, and that was a gliding accident, not murder, and I didn't really know him. I also said that I cared about dogs because they were faithful and honest, and some dogs were cleverer and more interesting than some people. Steve, for example, who comes to the school on Thursdays, needs help to eat his food and could not even fetch a stick. Siobhan asked me not to say this to Steve's mother.
11. Then the police arrived. I like the police. They have uniforms and numbers and you know what they are meant to be doing. There was a policewoman and a policeman. The policewoman had a little hole in her tights on her left ankle and a red scratch in the middle of the hole. The policeman had a big orange leaf stuck to the bottom of his shoe which was poking out from one side.
The policewoman put her arms round Mrs. Shears and led her back toward the house.
I lifted my head off the grass.
The policeman squatted down beside me and said, "Would you like to tell me what's going on here, young man?"
I sat up and said, "The dog is dead."
"I'd got that far," he said.
I said, "I think someone killed the dog."
"How old are you?" he asked.
I replied, "I am 15 years and 3 months and 2 days."
"And what, precisely, were you doing in the garden?" he asked.
"I was holding the dog," I replied.
"And why were you holding the dog?" he asked.
This was a difficult question. It was something I wanted to do. I like dogs. It made me sad to see that the dog was dead.
I like policemen, too, and I wanted to answer the question properly, but the policeman did not give me enough time to work out the correct answer.
"Why were you holding the dog?" he asked again.
"I like dogs," I said.
"Did you kill the dog?" he asked.
I said, "I did not kill the dog."
"Is this your fork?" he asked.
I said, "No."
"You seem very upset about this," he said.
He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.
The policeman said, "I am going to ask you once again . . ."
I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else.
The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet.
I didn't like him touching me like this.
And this is when I hit him.
13. This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them. Here is a joke, as an example. It is one of Father's.
His face was drawn but the curtains were real.
I know why this is meant to be funny. I asked. It is because drawn has three meanings, and they are (1) drawn with a pencil, (2) exhausted, and (3) pulled across a window, and meaning 1 refers to both the face and the curtains, meaning 2 refers only to the face, and meaning 3 refers only to the curtains.
If I try to say the joke to myself, making the word mean the three ...
迷失的地圖與失落的鏇律:一本關於記憶、時間和失落的史詩 圖書名稱:《失落的星圖與未竟的交響》(The Lost Astrolabe and the Unfinished Symphony) 作者:伊萊亞斯·凡·德·維爾德 (Elias van der Velde) 裝幀:精裝 --- 引言:時間之河的低語 在艾姆斯特丹的陰影中,在那些被運河的水聲和古老磚石的氣味所籠罩的狹窄街道上,時間似乎以一種不同的節奏流動著。它不像現代的節拍那樣急促而冰冷,而更像是一首被遺忘的巴洛剋樂麯,充滿瞭冗長的休止符和精妙的裝飾音。 《失落的星圖與未竟的交響》並非一本關於偵探或明確的謎團的書籍。它是一部對“失去”的深刻沉思,是對那些被記憶的潮汐捲走、再也無法完全尋迴的事物所發齣的挽歌。故事圍繞著兩個看似毫不相乾的元素展開:一幅失傳已久、據信能揭示“時間流速差異”的文藝復興時期星圖,以及一位二十世紀初荷蘭作麯傢遺留下的一部未完成的宏大交響樂。 第一部分:梵·德·維爾德的遺産 故事的敘述者是阿萊剋斯·範·德·維爾德,一位年邁的鍾錶匠,他繼承瞭傢族世代相傳的位於約旦區(Jordaan)的一間搖搖欲墜的工作室。阿萊剋斯的生活被精確的機械節奏所支配,每一顆齒輪的咬閤、每一支發條的鬆緊,都代錶著他對秩序的執著。然而,他的內心深處卻被一種巨大的虛空所占據——那是他祖父,著名但古怪的航海製圖師和天文愛好者,西奧多·範·德·維爾德,留下的未解之謎。 西奧多在一戰前夕神秘失蹤,隻留下瞭一個上瞭鎖的橡木箱子。箱子裏沒有黃金,沒有情書,隻有一疊關於“以太漂移”的晦澀筆記,以及一張模糊不清的素描——那似乎是一張極其復雜的星圖,上麵標注著一些阿萊剋斯從未見過的星座。傢族傳說聲稱,這幅“星圖”並非用於導航海洋,而是用於導航“時間”。 阿萊剋斯起初對祖父的“癡迷”嗤之以鼻,直到他開始修復一颱被遺棄多年的、擁有非傳統走時機製的古董天文鍾。這颱鍾錶內部的復雜結構,似乎與他無意中發現的一段來自二十世紀二十年代的樂譜片段有著驚人的相似性。 第二部分:未竟的和諧 這段樂譜片段,是屬於另一位隱居的藝術傢——作麯傢卡雷爾·德·布魯因的遺作。卡雷爾被譽為“光影的音樂傢”,他的作品以捕捉瞬間的情感變化而聞名。然而,他的最後一部作品,《永恒的七號交響麯》,卻永遠停在瞭第三樂章的尾聲。人們普遍認為,卡雷爾因無法找到那個“完美的收尾和弦”而心力交瘁,最終放棄瞭創作。 阿萊剋斯通過一個偶然的機會,接觸到瞭一個緻力於復原失傳藝術作品的私人研究小組。他們對卡雷爾的研究陷入瞭瓶頸,因為他們缺乏關鍵的理論支撐。卡雷爾在日記中多次提到,他試圖用音樂來“描繪”星辰的運動,特彆是他所稱的“那張圖”。 隨著阿萊剋斯深入研究祖父的筆記,他開始意識到,星圖和交響樂之間存在著一種超越邏輯的共振。星圖上的復雜幾何圖形,竟能被轉化為音符的時值和和聲的結構;而交響樂的某些不和諧音,似乎映射著星圖上那些“異常”的天體位置。 第三部分:記憶的殘片與時間的悖論 探索之旅將阿萊剋斯從艾姆斯特丹帶到瞭布魯日和裏斯本的古老圖書館。他追尋著西奧多留下的綫索,發現星圖的描繪指嚮瞭一個被遺忘的葡萄牙製圖學派,他們相信宇宙的和諧並非均勻分布,而是存在著局部的時間加速和減緩區域。 阿萊剋斯發現,西奧多並非試圖“測量”時間,而是試圖“定位”那些時間流速不同的“節點”——這些節點,或許就是卡雷爾在創作中感受到的,那些讓他無法捕捉的“瞬間”。 在裏斯本的一個塵封的檔案館裏,阿萊剋斯找到瞭一封西奧多的信件,收件人正是卡雷爾。信中解釋道,他通過計算特定星體在特定時間點的位置,推導齣瞭一個“情感頻率”,他相信這個頻率就是卡雷爾所需要的“收尾和弦”。然而,西奧多在完成計算後不久便神秘失蹤,帶著那份完整的星圖。 高潮與迴響 阿萊剋斯最終在祖父在比利牛斯山脈中一處廢棄的觀測站找到瞭星圖的殘本——它被巧妙地隱藏在一架破舊的天文望遠鏡內部。但令他震驚的是,星圖並非描繪已知的宇宙,而是一張描繪“人類集體記憶”的圖景。某些“星座”代錶著被遺忘的重大曆史事件,某些“星雲”則對應著集體潛意識中被壓抑的悲傷。 那“時間流速差異”並非物理現象,而是記憶強度對感知速度的影響。 手持著完整的星圖和未竟的交響樂稿,阿萊剋斯迴到瞭他的鍾錶店。他沒有試圖“修復”時間,而是選擇瞭一種更具藝術性的方式來麵對失落。他不再隻是鍾錶匠,而是成為瞭一個翻譯者。 在漫長的鼕夜裏,他將西奧多的幾何計算,用卡雷爾的音樂語言重新編織。他沒有“完成”交響樂,而是創作瞭一個“迴應”——一個基於星圖“節點”的、全新的尾聲。這個尾聲不是一個激昂的終結,而是一個帶著深深的、近乎透明的寜靜的結束。它接納瞭失落,承認瞭不完美,就像運河水流過韆年古橋時,那永恒的、帶著憂鬱的低語。 結語:時間的紋理 《失落的星圖與未竟的交響》是一部關於尋找連接點的作品:連接過去與現在、邏輯與情感、科學與藝術。它探討瞭人類如何通過藝術去抵抗遺忘,以及如何在一個不斷流逝的世界中,為那些重要的、卻已消散的瞬間,找到一個永恒的棲息之所。讀者將跟隨阿萊剋斯,體驗一場對精確與模糊、存在與虛無之間微妙平衡的深刻探索。這是一部獻給所有珍視那些隻存在於心間、無法被記錄的鏇律與影像的人們的作品。