Picoult Overreaches and Misses on Genre and Message in House Rules


You have to hand it to Jodi Picoult in House Rules: she writes enough mystery around her characters to leave readers scratching their heads, wondering if they ought to sympathize with and stay with the characters through the entire book, or jump ship early because it seems so obvious where the book is headed.

In House Rules, Jacob is an 18-year old with Asperger syndrome, raised by and living with his single mother Emma, carrying on a typical love/hate relationship with his 15-year old brother Theo. Obsession with the TV show CrimeBusters and crime scenes gets him into trouble when his social skills tutor and crush Jess ends up dead, and he steps in to lay out her corpse perfectly for the police to discover.

Arrested for Jess’s murder, Jacob struggles to explain his involvement in Jess’s death to his family, the police, and the courts. A great deal of the novel is spent on Jacob’s thoughts, then showing him fail to clearly verbalize those thoughts during his court case.

It’s nearly offensive that Picoult uses Asperger’s as a device to further complicate Jacob’s experience in the justice system.

Picoult draws hard lines between characters who understand Jacobs disability, those who don’t, and offers a few characters who will “get it” by the end of the book, going through their own journeys of education and understanding. It is at times schmaltzy, condescending, and too neatly wrapped up, how characters, just being around Jacob, transform, into better people. It’s a frightening use of handicapped people not as individuals but as tools to educate people without disabilities.

Picoult is also trying to do a lot here in terms of her style. She presents a murder mystery with not too much mystery to it, solved in just a few pages at the end of the book, which also feels manipulative. Most readers probably can guess the answer to the mystery early on, but Picoult hold out until the very end, offering no surprises. She is also taking a stand against ignorance about Asperger’s, and the message feels about as subtle as a bat to the head.

Thanks to my niece Chelsea for recommending House Rules.

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