House Rules (High Risk Books)

Product Information

Rumors circulate about the Ruskers doping their horses, but Lee finds out there's more to it than just business. A relationship begins between Tory and Lee after she signs on with the Ruskers, yet it is unhealthy and painfully ruthless. Linda, who is also Tory's ex-lover, becomes involved with Lee later on and subjects her to even more sadistic treatment. The sex is always rough and unsexy in this book, but it's visceral. Very raw and unflinching. Clearly, though, true affection and love are more painful to Lee than the fisting that Tory and Linda subject her to. 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. 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. Lee always rode for the Cheslers, an old-money family who specializes in hunters. However, it's evident that Lee has always harbored a crush on Tory Markham, a woman who rides for the fast and dangerous pair, Carl and Linda Rusker. Lee finds the world of show-jumping more interesting than the hunters, giving readers impressions that hunter-jumping is stagnant even if there is a steady income.

Not exactly spoilers in this review, but general outline of the plot (so you might want to avoid it!) Lewis's third and final novel, published posthumously, is as dark and gritty as her 1994 debut, House Rules 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. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2011-09-27 03:04:11 Boxid IA151001 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donor Her writing style encompasses everything I love and revere in a writer - a simple, heartfelt honesty that is the hardest thing to achieve.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. My experience with hunters & jumpers is entirely second hand. My world was sailing; but both riding and yachting satisfy some of our highest aspirations, demanding skill, intense competitiveness, dedication, physical endurance, & courage in the face of danger. In both we adapt to the demands of beautiful, unpredictable, & often expensive, @ the top echelon extremely expensive indeed, partners - horses or yachts. Which makes riding and sailing traditional pursuits for the rich. But by no means exclusively. Horses need riders & yachts need crew & both require a lot of maintenance & there are many young people in particular who would offer their whole lives to riding or to sailing - whose entire net wealth fits into a duffle bag. If that choice of life ever appealed when you were young (I’m gazing wistfully @ my old yellow seabag), you’ll find you share a lot with Lee. Her girlfriend, Tory, is also very obviously a victim. Another thing that killed me was that under different circumstances these characters could be so happy, they could heal each other and be happy young lesbians in love, but they’ve experienced so much trauma that the only way they can interact with each other is through violent sex and drugs. It’s got the hopelessness of a true tragedy, to the point that you almost become accustomed to the tragedy by the end of the book and you’ve gotten comfortable with the fact that there’s just about no hope for these characters.

While I had sympathy for Lee (did anyone ever figure out she was only 15?), I didn’t really understand her motivations. I know two or three (now grown) women whose fathers “interfered” with them in ways in which they will never recover: none of them were quite as damaged as anyone in the book. She was 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. [1] [3] The novel won the 1995 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. [4] 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 with a sadist and his wife. [3] Lewis' former teacher, Allan Gurganus wrote an afterword for Notice. [5] The book is essentially a re-writing of The Second Suspect from the point of view of one of the victims. Lccn 93025614 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL1416092M Openlibrary_edition

Need Help?

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. 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.

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 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. 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: Besides House Rules, Heather Lewis left behind two more novels; no horses, but like in House Rules very violent sexual episodes and a lot of drugs. Both offer as principal characters a wealthy couple who are addicted to sexually abusing teen-aged prostitutes. The Second Suspect is an apparent police procedural investigating the death of one of these girls. The other novel, Notice– published only after the author’s suicide – is a 1st person account by a teenaged prostitute who specializes in servicing businessmen commuters @ a suburban railway station car park. The two books are obviously closely related & artistically it makes sense to connect them. 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.)

About the Author

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. I think the part I find troublesome is the graphic sex—which is not about passion, but about pain. I understand why this was introduced, but after awhile, it does get old—and I would feel the same about heterosexual sex. To me, I always found sex in a book to be a filler when someone’s main story wasn’t strong enough. In this story, yes, it has purpose, but the extensive way it’s described over and over again, you sort of start to say ‘ok, is this it?’ In the beginning, it’s purpose was highlighted, but as we progress in the story, it just starts to work like a broken record. Obviously these incidents impacted on the writer, who wrote this obviously from experience. But, I feel it was to hide a greater feeling and emotion and story. Which is a shame. 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.