House Rules: the powerful must-read story of a mother's unthinkable choice by the number one bestselling author of A Spark of Light

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What did you make of ‘Case 11: My Brother’s Keeper’ and the ‘I’ that appears on the book’s final page? At times this effort to educate interrupts the flow of the narrative, but I think she was striving for completeness. I know, because that kitchen with its warm yellow walls is a place I want to be, not somewhere I’d run away from. So I grab my coat and head south, although it is twenty degrees outside and the wind feels like knives on my face.

So when this was chosen for my bookclub, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, and prepared myself to be reticent at the next meeting.I hardly ever go to the cafeteria, because a) there’s no one for me to sit with and b) all those conversations crossing each other feels like knives on my skin. Although I had my cousin David as a starting point, I wanted the main character to be able to speak to the reader directly – which meant creating a boy at the high end of the autism spectrum. It ended with the phone being thrown in defense, and me being chased into the living room, where Theo clocked me. The other fourteen are on my chin, from Christmas 2003, when I got so excited about some stupid gift that I crumpled the wrapping paper, and Jacob went ballistic at the sound.

I always know when the highway patrol is sending out the sanding trucks before they arrive; I get the special weather alerts when an Nor’easter is coming. They tell me I’m lucky to have a son who’s so verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the busted microwave and have it working again an hour later. Missing CrimeBusters, which is on the USA Network at 4:30 every day, thanks to the wonders of syndication. I can memorize a TV Guide schedule without even trying; I taught myself how to read Middle Egyptian and I helped my calculus teacher fix his computer. The kids I met who have Asperger’s are funny, quirky, frustrating, and just as individual as you or I.

Their mom drives a green Toyota van and their dad must be some kind of doctor, because twice now, I’ve seen him come home from work wearing scrubs. She’s probably eighty years old and living with a horde of cats, but I kind of think Auntie Em would make a great cop.

The teacher made a popular boy wear fake glasses so I’d have someone to connect with, but as it turned out, he didn’t really want to talk about whether archaeopteryx should be categorized as a prehistoric bird or a dinosaur. There’s one single faint footprint at the threshold of the living room, pointing toward the dead body of my son, Jacob. He has a very high IQ, he is funny and he is obsessed by forensics, he has been known to creep out of the house and visit crime scenes that he has been alerted to when listening in on his Police scanner. It is well-written from a literary standpoint, and is an important window into the minds of neurotypicals, and how they perceive us as autistics.whereas a defender general observes that ‘“Vermont’s decidedly crappy when it comes to psychiatric care for inmates”’ (p. House Rules" bills itself as a murder mystery with an Asperger's twist, but Picoult brings nothing original to either the mystery genre or books featuring characters on the Autism spectrum. The food dye and corn syrup mixture has matted his dark hair; his eyes are shining, even though they won’t meet mine. Or the mom dying of breast cancer who wrote a letter for her baby daughter to read when she grew up, about how she wished she could have been there for her daughter’s high school graduation, her engagement, her first child. According to the psychiatrist we first met, Jacob suffered from an impairment in social communication and behavior, without the language deficit that was a hallmark of other forms of autism.

p. 20) Jacob says, “Why would I want to be friends with kids who are nasty to people like me anyway? He was a computer programmer who worked at home and couldn’t stand the tantrums that Jacob would throw when the slightest thing set him off: a bright light in the bathroom, the sound of the UPS truck coming down the gravel driveway, the texture of his breakfast cereal. He's hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject -- in his case, forensic analysis. I knew that he’d have his faux crime scene completely cleaned up before eleven o’clock, because that’s when the Free Sample Lady sets up her table in the front of the Townsend Food Co-op. Five novels have been made into movies and BETWEEN THE LINES (co-written with daughter Samantha van Leer) has been adapted as a musical.According to the CDC, if every American child followed the recommended vaccine protocol, 33,000 lives would be saved, 14 million infections prevented, and ten billion dollars would be cut from healthcare costs annually. It isn’t until he’s halfway up the stairs that I look at him and see how red his cheeks are; how his hair is windblown. She falls asleep on the car ride home while I am still singing along to Hanna Montana songs on her CD, and I carry her upstairs to her bedroom. My mother seems driven to start a conversation, although neither Theo nor I are inclined to hold up the other end of it. All of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger's -- not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, flat affect -- can look a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel.