Victoria,

     I really *don't* agree with you that Christopher's problems fitting
   into society are borders that he has created for himself (I'm
   referring to the idea in your first sentence that people "put up"
   borders for themselves).  One might say they are hurdles that he 
   has to get over, but to me, they are mostly by-products of the fact 
   that his brain just works differently from most of our brains.  That 
   is not a choice he made, it is a part of who he is.  Now given that, 
   it's certainly possible to find his behaviors mysterious, but I think 
   it's still possible to try to understand them and feel empathy for 
   him and for people in the same situation.  Crossing that border of 
   empathy is one of the things we hoped everyone in CHQ would experience in 
   reading this book.
     
     For example, the "outbursts" you discuss certainly do make it difficult 
   for Christopher to fit into society.  But part of what Mark Haddon does 
   (through the first-person narration) is to try to explain things from 
   Christopher's perspective.  Because he is quite intelligent, he can explain 
   what his brain is doing, so we get (to me, very believable) insights on 
   what it must be like to have his form of autism.  And if you think about 
   those episodes where he does similar things, you might see a pattern.  
   For instance, his difficulty in overstimulating environments (too many 
   people, too much visual information flooding in on him, etc.) creates 
   reactions where he might roll up in a ball, moan, or yell.  Whenever 
   he is in a situation where he feels overwhelmed, he tries to shut it out, 
   the way any one of us might do in a situation that was causing extreme pain 
   (think of a compound fracture of a leg or some other very serious and 
   very painful injury).  In a really extreme situation, like the discovery 
   of the letters his father was keeping from him, he shuts down completely 
   for an extended time, as he says, like an overloaded computer.  Even
   if we would not react in exactly the same way, doesn't thinking about
   it that way make it more understandable?

     Similarly, Christopher's inability to recognize emotions in others is
   a common problem for people with autism.  More than anything, that is
   what makes fitting into society difficult for them.  The fact that he
   has to consciously look at pictures of faces labeled with the emotions
   they show and try to match them with the faces around him strikes me 
   as mostly sad and a little bit funny. "Normal" people use visual 
   cues to understand how people around them are reacting much more than we 
   realize. And haven't you ever had the experience that you just weren't 
   able to "read" another person at all?  In a situation where something 
   important was at stake, wouldn't that be a disquieting experience?
   
   Some specific comments:

   (1) in your first paragraph, line 6:  "one's" should be "ones"

   (2) in your sentence: "There are many characteristics of Christopher 
       that make him stick out ... " you could make this more direct 
       by saying "Christopher has many characteristics that make him
       stick out ... "

   (3) If you read the section where Christopher discovers Wellington dead
       again, you will see that he doesn't actually say he is sad.  He seems 
       more curious about what happened to me.  He thinks about how you can 
       always tell a dog's emotional state because they are simple and have
       only four states, etc.  We can't really project our emotional states 
       onto him because he is different. 

   (4) I think you are misinterpreting Christopher's mental state
       if you think he's feeling safe and secure when he has one of 
       his breakdowns.  See above.  In the first episode we see (p. 4), it's
       only the coolness of the grass that feels nice to him.  It's not
       the whole situation that is nice.  And by the way, notice how little
       he says about these episodes on the whole.  He just says he had one
       of them and describes what happened.  I think he's somewhat 
       ashamed of them, or if not that, that he knows they count
       as "behavioral problems."

   Content: 82 (B-)

   Mechanics: 92 (A-)