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Rachel Sontag
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publishers
Pub. Date: March, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780061341229
261pp
Book Room Review
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In her book House Rules,
Rachel Sontag explains that at an early age she
realized there was something deeply wrong with her father. On the surface, he was a well-respected,
suburban physician. But questioning his
authority led to brutal fights; disobedience meant humiliating punishments. When she was twelve, he duct-taped her stereo
dial to National Public Radio, measured the length of her hair and fingernails
with a ruler, and regulated when she could shower.
A memoir of a father obsessed
with control and the daughter who fights his suffocating grasp, House Rules
explores the complexities of their compelling and destructive relationship, and
his equally manipulative relationships with his wife and other daughter. As
Rachel's mother cedes all her power to her husband, and her sister fades into
the background of their family life, Rachel fights to escape, and, later, to
make sense of what remains of her family.
House Rules raises a
compelling question about the effects emotional abuse from a parent can have on
a child. Rachel’s father is a well
respected doctor, takes his family on expensive trips, and even sends Rachel to
wilderness camp. But in the privacy of
their home he is overbearing and controlling to the point of recording his
daughter’s phone calls and conversations.
He also insists on her hair and nails being a certain length, and
verbally abuses Rachel until she is even eventually removed from her home for a
while. Most damaging of all, Rachel documents her father’s drugging her mother
with lithium to keep her passive. Even
after reading all of this, I felt kind of a detachment from the story. I was excited to read about it to gain some
insight into all of the controversy surrounding this book, but compared to the
outstanding memoir, The Glass Castle, House Rules falls short. Sontag does not
allow the reader to feel for her, for some reason the story feels more like she
wrote it as a series of facts. I think
it would have helped for her to divulge more about her parents past and what
may have led her father to such an extreme behavior. Don’t get me wrong, I think some of the
things he did are awful, but required more depth and detail for such a book.
Book Room Grade
C
Review Posted: July 22, 2008
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