The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time   by Mark Haddon

Story about a spastic who's father murders the dog of a neighbour who has run away with his wife. When the spastic finds out who did it, he becomes scared and runs away to live with his mother. The spastic is unrealistically intelligent, and the whole story is pretty much nonesense. The writing is simple in keeping with the lead character.

Okay, so it's only a kids book, and I guess it will do well at introducing youngsters to reading, and it will make them think about science a bit (I still don't think it's very inspiring, though); beyond that it's nothing.

And it won the Whitbread book of the year award...