House Rules (High Risk Books)

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Heather Lewis was born in Bedford, New York and attended Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of three published novels. The first, House Rules (1994), details the experiences of a fifteen year old girl working as a show rider of horses-an experience the author herself had in her teenage years. Lewis's second novel, The Second Suspect (1998), follows the struggles of a female police investigator trying to prove the guilt of a powerful and influential businessman responsible for the rape and murder of several young women. The third, posthumously published novel, Notice (2004), describes the experiences of a young prostitute, Nina and her involvement wit Librarian note: Lewis's third and final novel, published posthumously, is as dark and gritty as her 1994 debut, House Rules Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9701 Ocr_module_version 0.0.10 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000168 Openlibrary_edition It's a really dark, lonely sort of book. I don't know how to explain what I mean. It just left me sort of lost- but her writing was really good. The fact that nobody has any deeper biographical information from her.. It's like she's faded away from history. It took me a long time to find out what I know about her, from bits and pieces. Nobody else seems to think about her anymore.

The entire story—while compelling—left me feeling empty and kind of confused. The sex was clearly perverse, but…what the hell? Was it an alternate form of cutting (which was all the rage when the book was written)? I could hardly tell what was even happening most of the time, except it involved a whole lot of fists/hands and violence, and it hurt (so good?). It certainly wasn’t erotic in any way. Nobody seemed to LIKE each other—where did the perverted sexual “need” come from? I'd never read a book authored by someone who was once a very close friend. Add to that that I've only recently found out she became an author. And that she took her own life, before I made this discovery. urn:lcp:houserules00lewi:epub:3e1beb52-f262-44ec-ba88-1c6b906f88e9 Extramarc Yale Library Foldoutcount 0 Identifier houserules00lewi Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t24b43t30 Isbn 9780385472104 Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-09-27 03:04:11 Boxid IA151001 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor

As Aristotle pointed out long ago, we enjoy good representations in fiction of things we would not enjoy at all in real life, whether Oedipus stabbing himself in the eyeballs, or in Lee’s case, what it would feel like to mount a horse after being fisted. I cannot imagine wanting to be a bottom, but can see in being a sexual passive a form of misplaced spirituality, a wrong turn in the path to what Ignatius designated as the third level of humility - perfect identification with Jesus’ suffering. But tho’ some of the blurb descriptions of this book make it sound like a work of Lesbian S/M erotica, I did not find that @ all. The sex scenes seemed more descriptions of extreme unarmed combat or OTT hazing @ a very bad fraternity or military school. The very heavy drug use in the novel represents a Dionysiac spirituality, as in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. (I’d known from my hospital experience the Dilaudid was the good stuff, but now I know why & that you can use it to control both horses & riders.) Like some other favorite characters, Lee is both extremely tough and very vulnerable. She doesn’t know how to recognize or repay generosity, yet she has an enormous capacity to endure abuse while retaining her personal dignity. Lee appears as a character who is honest and loyal, but can't get herself out of situations that will hurt her. It seems as if she doesn't have the strength or ability, but maybe it's because the pain helps numb everything in the end. She's a character who's very human and I found her relatable, despite us having little in common. I admire Lee. Sadly she only believes what happens to the horses is wrong, and could not understand the same was happening to her until the very end. An out lesbian, [6] her works explore aspects of American culture, such as the connections between power, drugs, sex, violence, love and justice. [3]

Although the book is powerfully honest and brutal I had problems more with the writing and character development. I suppose it just takes time to get used to how Heather Lewis wrote her novels. I admire the way she laid Lee's emotions and entire life bare for the reader to witness. It's just at the end of the book I didn't really feel like I knew Lee at all. And the entire world of show horses is completely unknown to me. I understand Lewis knew about it well and she certainly was able to show that through her words. I just wasn't able to picture any of the scenes in my head that contained the horses, which was a important thing to Lee. Warning: If you are looking for a book about horses and showing, this is NOT it. This is not the type of feel good, under dog winning the championship type of book. This is a book that shows the horse industry —that other aspect of the industry—that we know exists. And it’s graphic. Very, very graphic. The book begins with the narrator, Lee, facing expulsion due to being caught with pot and a bunch of boys (sound familiar?). As a result, she has nowhere to go but doesn't want to go home to a father who sexually abuses her and a mother who helps him do it. Lee manages to travel to the horse circuit after making her friend repay a drug debt, and on her way there, she is molested by a man who is her seatmate. Through this we begin to see how Lee copes with the way others treat her. The abuse of the riders is mirrored by the abuse of the horses, which gets more upsetting until the climax when everything comes to a head, and probably the last bit of comfort for the main characters gets destroyed. In the early 80's we were coworkers, neighbors, and cohorts. I would have loved to have seen a book by her about those times, as she could clearly speak of them better than I could. It would've been an amazing trip down memory lane of a time when she, my girlfriend and myself were the oddest kids in the sleepy little town of Mt. Kisco, NY. Hi may have to to write it myself.If you don’t have a problem with the context of the story, it is a very interesting read and very, very well written. Aside for a few things, I wish Miss Lewis had stayed with the world. I think she would have given a voice to many like her. Lccn 95069748 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL819130M Openlibrary_edition Lccn 93025614 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL1416092M Openlibrary_edition It's a deep and dark story, and what makes it work is the mystery of the show-jumping world. Not all of us are familiar with it, so there's a certain elusiveness. The story truly conveyed emotion and pain- when I read about the abuse Linda and Carl set their horses through, an example being a car battery used on a water jump, it gave me a very lonely and discomforting feeling. This book only makes me wonder- was there really someone like this, people who did this, and if so.. what happened to them? The situations are so odd that they feel real to me, but Heather can't answer these questions for me now. I wish she could. She does an excellent job of exploring the line between pain and pleasure in her work, and the relationships of those who walk it.

I wish we hadn't lost touch in the madness of our early twenties, but that's what that age is all about - breaking free and realizing your own self. But tho’ the sex in House Rules is not all that erotic, this book excels other novels about young athletes in the erotics of extreme competition. You can almost feel you’re in the saddle with Lee & smell the horse lather. Amber Dermont hadn’t a clue how to do that with dingy sailing in The Starboard Sea. Even Yonahloosee Riding Camp - tho’ belonging to a higher level of literature - doesn’t take you over the jumps with Thea Atwell as Heather Lewis lets you ride with Lee. The only thing I’ve read recently that matches this in sheer intensity is the chapter in Dare Me where the Sutton Grove cheer squad elevate Beth Cassidy for what is expected to be the culminating 2-2-1. (Beth, we recall, was also an equestrienne as well as a cheer captain.) This book is incredibly hard to get through not just because of the graphic violence and abuse, but because of the very real emotional fallout of the abuse. The main character, Lee, not only suffers brutal abuse from the adults who are supposed to protect her (many of them are also enabling it) but her narration reveals that she feels like it’s something about HER, that it’s her fault, which is gut wrenching. Not exactly spoilers in this review, but general outline of the plot (so you might want to avoid it!)Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-08-23 18:04:50 Boxid IA142422 Boxid_2 CH111901 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor urn:lcp:houserules000lewi:epub:7ff4901d-899e-42b1-9dba-6bdb829b3705 Extramarc Columbia University Libraries Foldoutcount 0 Identifier houserules000lewi Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t81k0jc73 Isbn 9781852424138

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. Next, we have a lot of unanswered questions about some main characters: Carl is alleged to be married, but we never hear of the wife, any history of the wife, other than 2 references. Even when the main character, Lee, stays with them in between shows, the wife is never even alluded to, but many other characters have their stories and history laid out up front. Confusing.

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I do wish we knew more about the main character: How did she start riding and how she got into the show scene, because the level she is showing is not an easy place to be. You need money—even as a catch rider, you need money and you need to be good enough to have a name that people want you showing their horses. Affiliation with a barn sure, but you need to win, and win a lot. So, right there, the level of this character’s skill is a bit frustrating, because as the writer does take you through moments of riding at the shows, they are of someone who is skilled. I know about drugs: with what they were using, the ONLY way was down, and fast (ie: dead). It didn’t make sense that Linda let the girls use so much; she could have been FAR more controlling with it—and it seems like she would have been. With opiate addiction comes withdrawal—hand-in-hand: we didn’t see much of that. Given our culture's evergreen fixation with elite lives in spiral, I'm baffled that House Rules hasn't experienced a second wind like Heather Lewis' Notice. Perhaps this has something to do with the novel's rights: House Rules was a New Narrative gem published by Serpent's Tail during the early days of the UK house's short-lived US division. Then again, existing US NN house Semiotex(e) doesn't have a good record of intuitively republishing books when their authors reenter literary work consciousness (cough, Shulamith Firestone, cough). urn:oclc:37246883 Scandate 20111208100831 Scanner scribe5.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition)