Appearance versus reality is the underlying theme of the hottest debut novel of the summer.  I can feel you yawning, but before you skip to another page of the newspaper, let me just say that the astonishing success of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time shows that the way a story is told, rather than the story itself, often makes the difference between an instant remainder and a literary bestseller.  Rights to the novel have been sold in more than a dozen countries, with the British publisher producing it in separate editions for teenagers and adults. 