The City The City

As of now, this book is reminding a lot of the slow start of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I've found the first fifty pages very dense and hard to get into. It is a bit of a sensory overload, being thrown into this world with absolutely no background information. I feel like I'm just reading blindly, trying to find something concrete to hold onto to pull me into the world that Miéville has created. However, it is extremely difficult. His blending of this fictional world of Beszel with little inserts about the real world, like his mentions of Turkey, are especially challenging. I'm having a hard time distinguishing the fantasy from the reality. I am also not at all invested in the characters right now. I think this is partially to do with their unfamiliar names, but also to do with the complete lack of personal or background information

However, I do find the book intriguing. The constant, ambiguous mentions that Miéville makes of the divide between the two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoman are interesting, especially because it seems that the cites are practically intertwined yet the inhabitants cannot acknowledge the other's existence. Borlú's comments about accidently seeing or noticing people who I'm assuming are from Ul Qoma and this being practically taboo is very intriguing. I'm looking forward to reading more of the book but hoping that my confusion will be resolved.

House Rules Disappoints

I was very dissatisfied with the ending of House Rules. I felt that the ending was a complete contradiction to the rest of the book and that Picoult after writing a book about a very difficult and emotional subject, took the easy route out by creating a cheesy "happy" ending.

Picoult spends the majority of the book focusing on Jacob's aspergers and the limitations and problems it presents both him and his family. She focuses on how Jacob's life is defined by rules that must be adhered to for his ability to function. His life and sense of responsibility is completely defined by these rules and he lives his life according to them. It is beyond Jacob's capabilities to act beyond these rules' limitations. This at least is the message I got from Picoult. Jacob's ability to act is incumbent on these rules. However, in the end, Picoult contradicts this by having Jacob stage Jess' murder because he is protecting Theo. While Picoult does state that Jacob is still following the rules at this point, the rule to "take care of your brother, he's the only one you've got," she also implies the happy ending that Jacob can overcome the Asperger's, "To all those experts who say that because I have Asperger's, I can't empathize: so there. People who can't empathize surely don't try to protect the people they love, even if it means having to go to court." However, at least from my perspective this seems to completely contradict the rest of the book. Jacob protects Theo because he applied the rules that govern his life to the situation, not out of love for Theo.

House Rules

I have read Jodi Picoult before and I have never really enjoyed her writing. Unfortunately the same can be said about House Rules. While I was immediately drawn into the story and motivated to keep reading, I have not found the book satisfying. I think this is partially because I finished the book already and was not satisfied with the ending. I feel as though there are a lot of details Picoult throws into the novel for no particular reason and then proceeds to ignore. I think she puts in the details such as Emma writing the advice column and Rich enjoying it to try and temper the serious and largely sad subject matter of the book. However, I just felt as though they were very out of place and disconnected from the story.

I also feel that while Picoult does an amazing job of developing Jacob and his issues with Aspergers for the reader, she doesn't sufficiently address or develop all the issues or characters in the book. At the beginning, I thought that Rich would have a larger role in the story since he is initially focused on quite a bit. However, by the end he seems to serve no real role and his narration is just thrown in as an afterthought. Also, Theo's obsession with breaking into houses is never really addressed although it is central to solving the mystery.

While I may have issues with Picoult's writing, I cannot deny that she does an amazing job with creating the character of Jacob. She obviously has some sort of insight into the world of a person with Aspergers and she does a very effective job of bringing and incorporating the reader into that world. I think that Theo's and Emma's narration that Picoult includes does a lot to enrich the story. They are the characters that the reader can relate to. While we may empathize with Jacob and relate to him on a more superficial level, in the sense of feeling like in outside on occasion, we cannot truly understand him or his disease. Therefore, by including his family's perspectives, the people who besides Jacob are most affected by his condition, Picoult is doing a masterful job of making the reader care about the story and characters.

GWTDT Deconstruction

I think the theme of the victim is a very interesting one in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There are many different opposing representations of the victim. Lisbeth Salander is a contradiction as she has the appearance of a victim, and is viewed as a victim or the perfect candidate for a victim by Armansky and Bjurman, however, she refuses to be victimized or allow herself to be characterized as a victim; her behavior is often that of a hero. Even when she is sexually assaulted by Bjurman, "Advokat Bjurman had chosen her as a victim," she refuses to play the role of one (277). She knows that she has to rescue herself, so she is her own rescuer, her own hero. However, Salander does not just rescue herself but also Blomkvist when he is being strangled by Martin. She rejects the role of the victim.

This is in contrast to the behavior of Harriet Vanger. She is the victim of the sexual abuse of both her brother and her father and instead of gaining revenge like Salander, she allows this victimization to define her. She is so conditioned to the role of the victim that the only we she can escape is to change her identity, she can't fight back.

Wennerstrom and his corporation play the role of the victim when Mikael publishes his initial story about them because it allows them to be viewed in a sympathetic light. Mikael, however, is the true, unsung victim of the company's deceit. He is forced to go to jail for writing a story that Wennerstrom had set up, for falling into the trap.