House Rules by Jodi Picoult

I just started reading "House Rules" by Jodi Picoult. This book is about a woman Emma who's husband left her. After her husband fled, she was left all alone to take care of her sons. One of her sons has a form of autism. Her other son named Theo has totally cut himself off from the rest of the world. Jacob the one with autism has problems connecting with people. He can never get off his routine or else he completely freaks out. He can't stand the sound of paper crumpling or the color orange. Life is almost equally hard for Theo because he is trying to be a normal teenage boy, but it's kind of hard to be.    Jacob is supposed to be his older brother but instead it's kind of the other way around.

I feel terrible for Emma it's one thing for your husband to leave you and start a whole new family, but on top of that to be left to take care of these two boys. They also don't have all the money in the world so it's hard. I wonder what Emma is secretly thinking some of the time. She always seems to have to put on this happy face for her sons but what's really behind all that? I wonder where she's storing all that pain. If you think about it you have to have a lot of patience to raise someone who has autism. Everything must always stay the same for Jacob. If they are going to the grocery store and Emma sees a perfectly good parking place, she can't take it because it's next to an orange car and Jacob hates the color orange.  At this point though she must be some what used to it because what other choice does she have? She loves Jacob with every ounce in her except it isn't easy. If I were her some days I would just want to sit down and crumble and cry. It's crazy that she has to deal with this at all, let alone having to do it all by herself.

Another interesting thing about this book is that it's told from everyone's perspective. Jacob, Theo, and Emma. When you hear Theo's side of the story it sounds equally hard. He comes off as this teenage boy who wants to totally cut himself off from the rest of the world but I can tell there is more to him then that. I mean think about it, it must be so hard to have a sibling with autism. Theo is just trying to be "normal" but once people find out about Jacob they back away from Theo. Theo also talks about how Jacob is supposed to be his older brother but he never really is or was. Jacob is kind of like having to deal with a young child even though he's 18 years old. Maybe the reason that Theo holds so much resentment towards Jacob is because he knows Jacob will never be the older brother that Theo always wanted.

Finally Jacob also talks. Jacob is extremely smart and I think smarter then people give him credit for. He knows that his brother wants nothing to do with him and he knows he can be a real handful sometimes. It's really interesting to see what Emma and Theo say about Jacob and how they plant this idea in your mind about who he is, but then when he gets a chance to talk about himself you realize actually how smart and real he is.

I really want to know what's going to happen next and how relationships in this story progresses.