Title: | House Rules*Written by: | Jodi Piccoult | Format: | Audiobook | Narrated by: | Mark Turetsky , Nicole Poole , Andy Paris , Christopher Evan Welch , Rich Orlow | Genre: | Mystery, Crime Drama, MIARC | |
---|
Ok, first, I have no idea how to write up this book without possibly giving anything away... If you're a savvy crime reader, you may pick up clues even though I'm trying to be vague... This is your potential SPOILER alert. Also, yes, technically for this to be on the Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge, it's not supposed to vilify the person with the mental illness. Well, this does... to some extent... by many characters... However, the other side of the coin does such a good job explaining Aspberger's — the quirks, difference in thinking patterns, the physical tics and their reasons — that you get a wonderful understanding of the syndrome and potentially how someone with the illness may think or why they might do something. And honestly... at least in regards to the main crux of the story, the kid did kind of do it to himself...
As is typical of Piccoult's work, her characters are amazingly real – wonderful, caring, flawed, sometimes damaged, and utterly typical people. The story was painstakingly sculpted and, in the audiobook version, the narrators all performed beautifully, giving each character his or her own feel and vibrancy. It was also quite intriguing and amusing to see how each character saw the others, especially when the characters who'd just recently met Jacob characterize him.
Of course, the whole story could have been derailed if anyone had asked Jacob one simple question, so for well over 6 hours I've been railing at the characters in the book to just asking that one fucking simple question already! For crying out loud! BLEARGH!!!
Although, I can't remember when I cared enough about a story to rail at its characters for being all too imperfectly human ;-)