Asberger stories

• Mark Haddon. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. London, 2004, Vintage. 0099450259
• Landon J Napoleon. ZigZag. London, 1999, Bloomsbury. 0747545146.

It would be easy to say that ZigZag is an American version of The Curious Incident (or vice versa - though the Curious Incident is better known, courtesy of the Whitbread Prize, ZigZag came first). There is some truth in that, but not enough: it sells both books short.

Each book centres around a fifteen year old young man with Asperger's Syndrome and a penchant for numbers, who is both narrator and central character. In ZigZag, the protagonist is ZigZag himself - real name Louis, fatally innocent child of a violent father, mother dead or possibly departed; in The Curious Incident it is Christopher, son of a loving but stressed and separated couple. Christopher is highly intelligent, good at maths, though ill equipped to cope with people or real life. ZigZag, though it is never pinned down, appears to be slightly mentally handicapped; he too is happier with numbers than with words, though not as much so as Christopher, but much more comfortable with people so long as they don't abuse him. ZigZag works on the pot wash of a restaurant where he is abused by the owner and other staff; daytimes he attends a special school.

Each book also centres around a crime. Christopher is investigating one: the murder of the dog from which the book takes its title, in the garden of his neighbour. ZigZag, wrongly accused of breaking a window and facing a beating if he doesn't pay his father a rent much greater than his paycheck from the pot wash, has naively committed one: removal of money from his employer's safe. For Christopher, everything depends on finding the dog's killer; for ZigZag, life and death (literally) depend on returning the money unnoticed.

Each of these young men has a sympathetic helper, and for each of them the book is about coming of age by moving beyond that helper's protection. Christopher has his key worker, Siobhan; his growth through the book is achieved by his own solitary and quietly heroic journey beyond her reach. ZigZag's protector is volunteer mentor Singer; Singer is dying of cancer, his ability to protect waning, and it is only at the end of the book that ZigZag emerges into his own world. Christopher's ordeal by fire is the world itself: a journey out of his small suburban world of home and school, alone, on a journey to his mother in London. ZigZag is beset by more concrete demons: a loan shark, bullying from his peer group, his father, the frozen streets of his city. Both of them meet sympathy as well as hostility: transient in Christopher's case, central for ZigZag who is aided and abetted by, amongst others, a chef at his restaurant and a prostitute with a grudge against his boss.

Each book is identifiably "of its society". ZigZag is unmistakably in the American fictional tradition: brash, violent, noisy ("noise" is ZigZag's word for any kind of physical or emotional pain, including Singer's cancer), but comes eventually to a rounded ending. The Curious Incident is equally identifiably British: quieter, less sharply defined, and with an undefined, open ended conclusion. Both, though, are strong, involving, life affirming portrayals of personal heroism.

Part of my life is spent within the education system, and from time to time I meet young people like Christopher and ZigZag. I recognise them both, and after reading their stories I am not only enriched but better able to understand them.