House Rules

I suppose I will start off like everyone else and just say that I really like House Rules. I put off starting it because I assumed it was going to be a downer (and because I was busy finishing The Girl Who Played With Fire, which was pretty good), but from the first few pages, I was interested in the Hunt family’s story. While I have thus far been correct about it not being a terribly uplifting story, that hasn’t stopped me from flipping pages at a rapid pace.

My only exposure to Asperger’s has been through pop culture, but I feel like the representations I’ve seen do the syndrome a lot of justice and help thoroughly define what it means for both those suffering from it and their families. Picoult does an excellent job of helping readers get in Jacob’s shoes (which ironically, he couldn’t do in return) and see life through his eyes (but not literally… see what this book has done already?). The comparisons between having AS and being in a country where you don’t understand the language were especially poignant to me, and helped me better grasp what day to day life would be like for someone like Jacob.

One question I have, as the book progresses, is Picoult’s reason for writing the novel. As we previously discussed, mystery novels tend to be written without a real “goal” in mind other than solving said mystery, whereas realist books like Little Bee could be written to increase advocacy/empathy/etc. I wonder if Picoult wrote this purely as a compelling mystery book with complex relationships or if she intended to increase awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome. Either way, I find the book incredibly compelling, and I’m excited to read more.