Jodi Picoult's House Rules will change the way you look at kids with autism. When they make the movie on this, which I'm sure they will (her earlier book My Sister's Keeper was made into the Cameron Diaz-starrer, after all)...it will be as revolutionary in popular culture as Dustin Hoffman's character in 'Rain Man', which unfortunately became something of a stereotype.
You'll look at children with autism spectrum disorder (it covers an entire range of developmental disorders) differently, and you'll do the same for those who care for them, too. Heart-felt and wise, heart-breaking and yet funny and intense, House Rules is a tour de force.
The main man, Jacob Hunt, is a brilliant teenager. Who also has Asperger's Syndrome. His passion is re-creating crime scenes, go figure! But he has a rapt and attentive audience in his mum Emma, that's for sure. Now there's a character. Emma makes a living as a wildly popular and often funny agony aunt Auntie Em...she adores her son, understands him, and has clearly put her life on the line for him. She's put her life on hold for him as well. And you can understand the guilt that seeps in, because it's her younger, “normal” son Theo who bears the brunt of this, in some ways. She can't be a perfect mother to both, that's just the way it's set up – Jacob takes up all her time and mental space. By writing it like it is, not masking the weariness in a life like this, or the anger and frustration that wells up and out, Picoult has given such mothers everywhere well-deserved recognition.
Theo, the younger brother, perpetually in need of attention that he's starved of...who “never asked for this”, is for the most part, irritated by his older, needier brother who's different. He tries not to acknowledge him in public, and it's so poignantly described – how even as he's dying to fit in, he never can...he may be normal, but to the rest of the school and world, he's the brother of a “weirdo”. There's no doubt he feels trapped.
The style works well – each character takes turns narrating chapters, each of them have their own distinct font, not to mention thought process.
Thanks to the way he's wired, Jacob takes every command and every statement literally and craves routine, but is frighteningly articulate. Even when he sees the vacancy in his own eyes as a younger child, who's no longer “quite there”. How this boy becomes a murder suspect, you have to read to believe - but Picoult taps into a great reservoir of emotion. Spoiler alert: Suffice it to say, he implicates himself, for someone he loves.
This is about families fighting despite all odds, pulling together in spite of themselves, and loving fiercely, and no holds barred. It's about the rare moments outsiders get a glimpse of that, and a toe-hold in that universe. It killed me and the ending was perfect.
Picoult's clearly got a gift, though I'm not sure I'm quite ready for whatever intensity awaits in her earlier book, ‘My Sister's Keeper’. I'll pass for now but I feel emotionally enriched, somehow, for having read this one.
(House Rules from Hachette India, at Rs 595/-)
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