Wednesday, May 5, 2010

House Rules

House Rules is the newest book out by Jodi Picoult.  It is about an eighteen year old boy with Asperger Syndrome who is accused of murder when his social skills tutor is found dead and all clues lead to him.  

Jacob Hunt lives with his divorced mother and his fifteen year old brother, Theo.  Live is difficult living with Jacob.  He is both the sweetest boy in the world, and very difficult if anything in his life is changed or disrupted.  Only certain color foods and clothes are allowed each day of the week (ie. Thursday is brown day-he will only wear brown, and dinner is steak, baked potatoes, gravy and brownies.  Friday is a little more difficult-that is blue day!).

Jacob is fixated on crime scene/forensics.  He is an expert on the subjects.  He figures that the police could learn a lot from him if they would listen.

The story is told from several points of view.  Each chapter is told by either Jacob, his mother Emma, his brother Theo, or by his attorney Oliver.

Ms. Picoult appears to have done an excellent job researching Asperger's and autism.  There was a lot of good information about these disorders in the book, so if you are curious about Asperger's, this book, although it is fiction, would be quite educational.  I thought that the ending of the book was a little weak, but all in all, an interesting book.

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