** spoiler alert ** 
 Christopher's narrative voice was sweet and everything, but I'm guessing that the overall appeal of this book is how the unnamed-but-likely-autistic-spectrum-y diagnosis informs perception: that how Christopher experiences the world is sometimes so radical that it allows neurotypical readers to see accepted aspects of social reality as strange. It's surreal and interesting, usually, to glimpse the social world through a vastly different lens, and I suspect that's the main thing that most readers find fascinating about this book, and understandably so. I feel like it can be super challenging to represent a character's disability in a way that does not problematically other them, and Haddon accomplished this: Christopher is a full, complex character, and ultimately deeply relatable. However, I can't decide if the random asides about maths and astronomy and extinction were brilliant or gimmicky or totally inherent to/ not divorcable from Christopher as a character. I also can't decide how I feel about the ending. I'm glad Christopher has his triumph: 
 "And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything." (221) 
 And I know that the message is basically, Christopher's resilient, and because he's resilient, he's gonna be OK. Which is great: empowering, inspiring, etc. But at the same time, you get the sense that Christopher's life is going to continue to be in turmoil as he deals with custody rollercoasters, his profoundly stressed mom struggling to support the two of them, his shitty dad trying to make peace with him after murdering a dog, etc. Normally I'm fine with unsettled endings and It Is Usually More Literary to have them but what unnerves me a bit about this one is that while Christopher is aware of his circumstances, he remains unaware of their emotional impact. His triumph is real and he'll continue to struggle. But I guess I am imagining that the story will continue in its own fictional world and the audience (readers) will go away. And without readers/ an audience, there is no more generating insight into the emotional realities of Christopher's circumstances. And he'll be alone again. But he was alone before too, I suppose.