House Rules: A Memoir [Paperback]

A memoir of a father obsessed with control and the daughter who fights his suffocating grasp,House Rulesexplores the complexities of their compelling and destructive relationship as Rachel fights to escape, and, later, to make sense of what remains of her family.

As Rachel Sontag makes clear in her searing memoir, House Rules, emotional abuse can be as devastating, as cruel, as the most severe physical and sexual maltreatment&.What is remarkable and inspiring is that Sontag emerged from the situation a stronger person.Sontags lean writing captures the tension -- the feeling of family as prison. Each time an outside observer recognizes her fathers manipulative cruelty, the reader feels a little surge of hope. Get out of there, Rachel! Get out![Sontags] story shows just how resilient the human spirit can be.&somehow, Sontag rises above the predictable in this gripping, quirky, unusual look back at a childhood that would have ruined adulthood for most people. Sontags voice remains clear, authentic, and humorous throughout.As riveting, passionate and powerful a memoir as any I have read in recent years, it is also noteworthy for the balance and scrupulous self-scrutiny the writer brings to her younger self. The result--harrowing as the story may be--is a literary delight.Sontags is a brave account, not only of what its like to take the brunt of an abusive parents wrath, but of what it means to have the courage to leave.In this brave, hard-won, and gorgeously written memoir, Rachel Sontag lays out the story of her family in prose as tautly strung and delicate as a high-wire. . . . A remarkable book....a fresh and utterly engrossing memoir...a father/daughter story full of candor, truth, betrayal and, ultimately, love.Sontag recollects in vivid detail what it is to die a slow emotional death then somehow manage to resuscitate herself.