Novels Now

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

Pages: 532 pages
First Published: Mar. 2, 2010
Publisher: Atria Books
Rating: 2/5

First sentence:

Everywhere I look, there are signs of a struggle.

Reason for Reading: I have Asperger’s. My son is autistic. I have never read a Jodi Picoult book before as they have never interested me but when I heard the topic of this one was Asperger’s I obviously just had to read it.

Comments: As a person with Asperger’s I am dismayed with Picoult’s portrayal of an adult with Asperger’s Syndrome. Picoult starts off by showing us all the sources she has used for her research but once one starts reading it is obvious she is so full of research she doesn’t know what to do with it. She has taken every possible symptom of both Asperger’s and autism (which are two different diagnoses) and put them all into the character of Jacob. Not only is Jacob loaded down with every single symptom of both diagnoses, each of his symptoms are of the most extreme variety. A real-life ‘aspie’ (as we call ourselves) will have some, perhaps even many, but certainly not all textbook examples, of the symptoms and then they are at varying degrees at that. What Picoult has done here is a disservice to the Asperger’s community.

From the mother: “Since there’s no cure yet for Asperger’s, we treat the symptoms …“. Asperger’s is not a disease or an illness! There is no cure because one is not needed. Just from reading the positive reviews of this book I see the word “illness” being used over and over to describe Asperger’s! Simply because the book has left readers unfamiliar with AS with that impression. I could sit here and write an essay refuting all the quotes on the dog-eared pages I created while reading, but I won’t. If you want a realistic view of a young man with Asperger’s I urge you to read the book “Marcelo in the Real World” by Francisco X. Stork. The main character is 17 years old and is very comparable to Jacob only the author has done an excellent job in portraying Asperger’s, showing the struggles we face but also shows that we do indeed function and do not need anyone’s sympathy.

BTW, I did give the book 2 stars because if I removed the whole Asperger’s element I thought the mystery was quite interesting with a fun little twist to the solution.