The Rules of Survival

for Matt And His Sisters, Life With Their Cruel, Vicious Mother Is A Day-to-day Struggle For Survival. But Then Matt Witnesses Murdoch Coming To A Child's Rescue In A Convenience Store, And For The First Time, He Feels A Glimmer Of Hope. When, Amazingly, Murdoch Begins Dating Matt's Mother, Life Is Suddenly Almost Good. But The Relief Lasts Only A Short Time. When Murdoch Inevitably Breaks Up With Their Mother, Matt Knows He Needs To Take Action. But Can He Call Upon His Hero? Or Will He Have To Take Measures Into His Own Hands? A Heart-wrenching Portrait Of A Family In Crisis, This Is Nancy Werlin's Most Compulsively Readable Novel Yet.

voya

unlike Werlin's Previous Four Novels, This Latest Includes Nary A Mystery Element. But The Departure From Genre Does Not Mean That Werlin's Newest Book Lacks Suspense. If Anything, It Is One Of Her Most Deliciously Harrowing Works. Eighteen-year-old Narrator Matthew Introduces The Novel With A Letter To His Younger Sister, Emmy; The Body Of The Book Is What He Calls The True Story Of Our Family's Past And Is Written In Short, Tight, First-person Chapters That Occasionally Address His Sister-and Readers, His Real Audience. In The Novel, Matthew Recounts His Thirteenth Through Sixteenth Years, During Which He, Emmy, And Their Middle Sister, Callie, Lived In A Small Apartment In South Boston With Their Manic And Abusive Mother. Much Of What Matthew Describes Involves His And Callie's Attempts To Protect The Younger And More Vulnerable Emmy. The Siblings Spend Much Of Their Time On Edge, Attempting To Appease Their Mercurial Mother And Protect Emmy From Her Often-violent Wrath. When Their Mother Begins Dating A Complicated Man Named Murdoch, Matthew Casts This Newcomer As The Family's Savior And Is Frustrated And Depressed When Murdoch Does Not Immediately Rise To The Occasion. The Plot Moves Swiftly And Unrelentingly To A Climax That Visits Themes Common To Some Of Werlin's Earlier Works And Offers An Uneasy Recognition Of The Same Conclusion David Yaffe Voiced In The Killer's Cousin (delacorte, 1998/voya October 1998), Anyone In This World Can Have The Power Of Life And Death Over Someone Else. It's Horrible, But True.