OliveOilMom
I have some missing posts.
Has anybody read "House Rules" by Jodi Picoult? It's about a young man with AS who lives with his mother and younger brother, and is accused of murder. I enjoyed the book because I like the author and most of her work, but there were a lot of things about the portrayal of the AS character that I didn't care for. He seemed to me like someone who had more severe autism than AS. He had a meltdown because the free sample lady wasn't at the store when he and his mother went there, he had a meltdown in court when someone crumpled up a piece of paper, he had to watch a particular TV show every afternoon or he would have a meltdown and he also kept a notebook about the tv show and all the episodes even though he had seen them all many times before (Rain Man anyone?)
I did like how his "voice" was when chapters were written from his POV. She portrayed him as intelligent and with a good sense of humor and with knowledge and usage of sarcasm. His "voice" didn't match up with the things he said in the rest of the book though, IMO, and also didn't match up with his actions.
Has anyone else here read it, and if so what did you think of it, and of the main character?
ETA; I did not like the way his mother handled most things at all. She ignored too many things about her younger son, and she indulged her older son with almost everything. She went so far as to cook only certain colored foods on certain days because he would only eat those colors on those days. I understand that you need to accommodate your kid lots of times, but accommodating everything all the time doesn't teach them how to handle things in the real world when things don't go your way. I do like how she managed to support both kids and get all of his needed supplements and treatments that weren't covered by insurance, and I liked how she stood up for him when she needed to, but I think she went overboard with a lot of it and I don't think he would learn to fend for himself one day with her doing that all the time.
I did like how his "voice" was when chapters were written from his POV. She portrayed him as intelligent and with a good sense of humor and with knowledge and usage of sarcasm. His "voice" didn't match up with the things he said in the rest of the book though, IMO, and also didn't match up with his actions.
Has anyone else here read it, and if so what did you think of it, and of the main character?
ETA; I did not like the way his mother handled most things at all. She ignored too many things about her younger son, and she indulged her older son with almost everything. She went so far as to cook only certain colored foods on certain days because he would only eat those colors on those days. I understand that you need to accommodate your kid lots of times, but accommodating everything all the time doesn't teach them how to handle things in the real world when things don't go your way. I do like how she managed to support both kids and get all of his needed supplements and treatments that weren't covered by insurance, and I liked how she stood up for him when she needed to, but I think she went overboard with a lot of it and I don't think he would learn to fend for himself one day with her doing that all the time.
