Sunday, June 6, 2010

My goodreads review of "House Rules" by Jodi Picoult

House Rules House Rules by Jodi Picoult


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm not a Picoult fan (why, oh why, does she need to use separate fonts for each of her characters?), but my local librarian asked me to read this and tell if Picoult "got autism/Asperger's right." I didn't need the vaccine/autism lecture on pages 46-47 and I worry that the uninitiated reading this are going to make all sorts of assumptions about the faulty science behind it and assume it's a given fact that vaccines cause autism. I suppose Picoult intended it as narrative by the mother character, but it read like a sidebar. She mostly gets Asperger's right, except for a few spots where her Jacob character seems to "snap out of" his autism long enough for a soliloquy. Also, was I supposed to be surprised, or was I supposed to have figured it out by the middle of the book, as I did?

View all my reviews >>