CI: Curious in the Marketplace

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CI Curious in the Marketplace
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• WHY DID THIS NOVEL BECOME A POPULAR BESTSELLER?

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• WHY DID THIS NOVEL BECOME A POPULAR BESTSELLER?

• Point of View Characterisation
• Larger Humanist Themes
• Plays with the Idea of the Book
• Simplicity Difficulty

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Making the ordinary extraordinary--

• And I remember that night I just cried and
  cried and cried and your father was really nice
  about it at first and he made you supper and he
  put you to bed and he said these things happen
  and it would be ok.  But I said I couldn't take
  it anymore and eventually he got really cross and
  he told me I was being stupid and said I should
  pull myself together and I hit him, which was
  wrong, but I was so upset.
• We had a lot of argumants like that.  because i
  often thought i couldn't take any more.  and your
  father is really pacient but I'm not, I get
  cross, even though I don't mean to.  and by the
  end we stopped talking to each other very much
  because he knew it would always end up in an
  argumant and it would go nowere.  and i felt
  realy lonley  (Haddon 107).

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Making the ordinary extraordinary--

• Then he said, Holy fucking Jesus, Christopher.
  How stupid are you? . . .
• Then Father said, What the fuck did I tell you,
  Christopher? This was much louder.
• . . .
• But Father interrupted me and said, Dont give
  me that bollocks, you little shit (Haddon 81).

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• Haddons interview with David Welch for
  Powells.com
• It's not just a book about disability.
  Obviously, on some level it is, but on another
  level, and this is a level that I think only
  perhaps adults will get, it's a book about books,
  about what you can do with words and what it
  means to communicate with someone in a book.
  Here's a character whom if you met him in real
  life you'd never, ever get inside his head. Yet
  something magical happens when you write a novel
  about him. You slip inside his head, and it seems
  like the most natural thing in the world.

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• HOW WAS THIS BOOK MARKETED?

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• HOW WAS THIS BOOK MARKETED?

• UK, North America, Typeface
• Different Editions Different Audiences

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(No Transcript)
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US Edition
UK Edition
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• Haddons Interview with David Welch for Powells
  Books
• It was definitely for adults, but maybe I
  should say more specifically It was for myself.
  . . . Consequently, I was quite surprised when
  I gave it to my agent and she said, Let's try it
  with both adult and children's publishers and see
  what happens. I was really quite surprised and,
  truth to tell, perhaps a bit disappointed because
  I'd spent a lot of effort trying to move away
  from writing for children. Here I thought, Maybe
  I'm about to slip back inside the ghetto again.

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• JUST HOW COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL WAS THE NOVEL?

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• JUST HOW COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL WAS THE NOVEL?

Bestseller Lists 55 weeks top 10 on Globe and
Mail bestseller list 76 weeks top 150 USA
Today 57 weeks top 10 New York Times Paperback
Bestseller lists International Bestseller sold
in 42 countries
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UK Bestsellers  Data from Nielsen BookScan's
Total Consumer Market  

• JUST HOW COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL WAS THE NOVEL?

Sales Figures
 
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• WHAT DID THE LITERARY CRITICS HAVE TO SAY?

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• WHAT DID THE LITERARY CRITICS HAVE TO SAY?

• Literary Prizes
• Commonwealth Writers Prize            Best
  First Book Award   3,000 
• Whitbread Literary Award
•                  Best Novel   5, 000
•                  Whitbread Book of the Year  
  25, 000

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• WHAT DID THE LITERARY CRITICS HAVE TO SAY?

Reviews Review from The Times Literary
Supplement, Feb 6th, 2004 The Juvenilisation
of Everything continued last week, when Mark
Haddon won the overall Whitbread Award for his
book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time, having already been declared the
winner in the Novel category . . . . We cast
no aspersions on the quality of Mr Haddon's book,
which has sold over 100,000 copies in hardback.
What bemuses us is the phenomenon of adults
finding solace in stories intended for kids.
Bloomsbury recently announced its intention to
issue the Harry Potter books with covers more
suitable for adults. Likewise, the publishers of
The Curious Incident now have two separate
editions to print--one for children and another
for people who are legally no longer so. The
latter edition is outselling the former by four
to one.
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• WHATS NEXTFOR HADDON FOR THE NOVEL?

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• WHATS NEXTFOR HADDON FOR THE NOVEL?

• Adaptations, Spinoffs
• Haddons Next Novel

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Adaptations, Spinoffs, etc
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• Patrick Ness review of Haddons A Spot of
  Bother, The Guardian, August 26th, 2006
• What, then, to make of A Spot of Bother, a
  perfectly readable yet strangely undemanding
  novel of familiar domestic drama? Where did the
  inventiveness of Curious Incident go, or the
  stubbornness that issued The Talking Horse? Why
  would a mind so promisingly interesting produce a
  book so ... well, pleasant?