The Rules of Survival (Hardcover)

by Nancy Werlin (Author)
Key Phrases: Cumberland Farms, Murdoch Mcllvane, Officer Brooks (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up–Werlin tackles the topic of child abuse with grace and insight. Narrated by 17-year-old Matt as a letter to his youngest sister, Emmy, The Rules of Survival is his effort to come to terms with the vicious treatment he and his two sisters suffered at the hands of Nikki, their beautiful and unpredictable mother. One of Matts early memories involves getting up during the night to sneak a cookie back to bed and being caught by his mother. Giggling and yelling Cookie thief, she holds a knife to his throat, cutting him just a little bit to teach him not to steal. As much as he fears her manic highs and lows, his greater concern as he grows older is for the safety of his sisters. He and Callie shield Emmy as much as possible from Nikkis volatile moods. Compounding the problem are the adults in their lives–their father and their aunt–who recognize Nikkis instability but find it easier to look the other way. When Nikkis ex-boyfriend Murdoch befriends the children, they want to believe that a more normal future is possible, but are afraid of being disappointed by an adult yet again. The characters captivate readers from the beginning, and short, terse chapters move the plot along with an intensity that will appeal to seasoned Werlin fans and reluctant readers alike. Teens will empathize with these siblings and the secrets they keep in this psychological horror story.–Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 7-10. Living with an unpredictable, psychotic mother has taught Matthew how to survive. Constantly on alert, he and his sister, Callie, devotedly shelter their younger stepsister, Emmy, from their mother's abuse and worry about staying safe. Matt insists that "fear isn't actually a bad thing . . . . It warns you to pay attention, because you're in danger. It tells you to do something, to act, to save yourself," but his terror is palpable in this haunting, powerful portrayal of domestic dysfunction, which is written in retrospect as a letter from Matt to Emmy. Unfortunately, the adults in the children's life, a distant father and an apathetic aunt, don't help, though Matt sees a spark of hope in Murdoch, who dates his mother, Nikki, and then leaves when he becomes another target for her escalating rage. It is Murdoch, with a violent past of his own, who is willing to risk getting involved and eventually becomes the change agent that the children so desperately need. The author of Double Helix (2003),Werlin reinforces her reputation as a master of the YA thriller, pulling off a brilliant departure in this dark but hopeful tale, with pacing and suspense guaranteed to leave readers breathlessly turning the pages. Cindy Dobrez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Dial; 1st Edition: 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 edition (September 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803730012
• ISBN-13: 978-0803730014
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #429,993 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: THE RULES OF SURVIVAL, September 7, 2006

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

As Matt explains, it was a sweltering Boston evening, and a date night for their mother. Matt was thirteen at that point, and Callie was eleven on that evening they left their five year old sister Emmy sleeping alone in the apartment, climbed out the window, and raced around the corner to buy a couple of Popsicles at the convenience store. They would return home a few minutes later with the dream that a stranger whose behavior they'd just witnessed might somehow be persuaded to intercede in the frightening and dangerous world they inhabited, a world controlled by Nikki, their nightmare of a mother.

"Callie and I headed straight for the ice cream freezer, and we'd just reached it when the yelling began. We whipped around.
"It was the barrel-shaped man and the little kid. The man had grabbed the boy by the upper arms and yanked him into the air. He was screaming into his face while the kid's legs dangled: 'What did you just do?'
"The little kid was clutching a package of Reese's Pieces and he started keening, his voice a long, terrified wail, his small body rigid.
"The big man--his father?--shook him hard, and kept doing it.
" 'I'll teach you to take things without permission! Spend my money without asking!'
"And then the other man, the one I later knew was called Murdoch, was between the father and son. Murdoch snatched the little kid away from his father and put the kid down behind him. Then Murdoch swiveled back.
"Emmy, I like to freeze the memory in my mind and just look at Murdoch. He was a medium kind of man. Medium height, medium build, hair shaved close to the skull. You wouldn't look twice--until you have looked twice.
"He wasn't afraid. I noticed that right away about him. Here was this huge enraged man, facing him. But this other man, Murdoch, was calm. At the same time, there was this sort of tension coiling off him.
"Callie and I were behind Murdoch and to the left, so we had only a partial view of his face and expression. But we had a full-on view of the little kid, who was so shocked that he stopped crying and just stared up at Murdoch's back with his mouth open.
"Meanwhile, Murdoch said, quietly but audibly, 'If you want to hurt somebody, you can hurt me. Go on. Hit me. I won't hit back. You can do it until you're not angry anymore. I'll let you.'
"There was an endless, oh, five seconds. The father's eyes bulged. His fists were clenched. He drew one arm back. But Murdoch was still looking straight at him, and I knew--you could feel it vibrating in the air--that even though Murdoch had said he wouldn't hit him, he wanted to. He wanted to hurt him.
"I liked him for that. No, Emmy, I loved him for that. Immediately."

Imagine being a child in a single-parent household with a mother who puts a knife to your throat for sneaking an Oreo without asking. A mother who suddenly pulls into the oncoming lane of traffic on the highway and demands you convincingly express your love and devotion to her (or else).

Sure, there are other adults around. Matt and Callie's distant and ineffectual father Ben also lives in Boston. But Ben is not Emmy's father, so even if they could convince him to do something, it wouldn't be of any help in their quest to protect their little sister from Nikki's insanity. Their Aunt Bobbie lives in the apartment below them, but she apparently ignores her big sister's horrific behavior toward the children. Matt and Callie are convinced that The System will, at the very most, provide temporary relief from the terror.

"Nikki was Nikki, unpredictable, temperamental, and vicious, with weird little moments of generosity and laughter mixed in. But she had always been that way. We could cope, and we would cope, because we always had."

But what happens when Murdoch's entrance into that world causes it to then become more and more and even more dangerous than it already was? There is no question that you'd better know THE RULES OF SURVIVAL.

After two days of reading in the bedroom, the dining room, the classroom, the parking lot, and the goat barn, I turned the final page and was finally able to get it unstuck from my hands.

Now that's what I call a gripping tale.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, October 30, 2006

By	TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

"You looked at Callie and me from over our mother's shoulder... I hoped you wouldn't try to wriggle out of the embrace, because in fact our mother seemed to be in a good mood. She was humming. Cocaine? New man? There
were a few possibilities, and I didn't care which one it was. Maybe we'd have an okay evening."

Those are the words of Matthew Walsh as he tells a story of survival to his youngest sister Emmy. Matthew has decided to write down the events as they happened so his sister can read them some day. She was so young at the time, he worries that she might not understand the details of their early life in the hands of an abusive mother.

Nancy Werlin writes a powerful novel, THE RULES OF SURVIVAL, about three children and their struggle to live normal lives surrounded by chaos and abuse. Their crazed mother Nikki, most likely bi-polar or manic-depressive, has created a topsy-turvy environment for her family. One day she's treating them to a gigantic pancake feast at IHOP, and the next she disappears without a trace for days.

Matthew, Callie, and Emmy soldier on alone until help arrives in the form of a sympathetic boyfriend. He enlists the help of Matthew and Callie's father and their mother's sister to rescue the kids from the chaos.

Werlin creates a realistic and terrifying picture of life through Matthew's eyes. Readers will remember the story well after the last page. This is a book worth reading for adults as well as teens.

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A chilling tale of children endangered by a mother with BPD, September 19, 2007

By	B. Case "InquiringMind" (Redondo Beach, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Rules of Survival" by Nancy Werlin deserves all the high praise it has been getting from young and old alike. I loved it from the first page and couldn't put it down. How could I resist? This is such a compelling tale of psychological, emotional, and physical child abuse, and it is told so earnestly and believably from the eldest child's point of view. What makes this book is so devastatingly compelling is that the abuser is the children's mother.

I don't want to give away the plot, or spoil any part of this wonderful tale by telling you any critical details. It is enough to say that this book is well-written, thrilling, and fast-paced. The characters are extremely believable. There is no doubt that Nancy Werlin is a master storyteller.

But I do want to make one matter perfectly clear: yes, their mother is mentally ill, but please don't be mislead by other reviews to think that she is a bipolar (a modern term for manic-depressive illness) or psychotic. Perfectly normal-acting persons with bipolar illness surround all of us every day. This illness can be treated very successfully by medication. It would be wrong of you to think that Nikki's actions are those of person suffering from bipolar illness. And psychotic...well, if Nikki were psychotic she'd be a lot worse than what she is here in this novel, and true psychotics are a lot rarer. No, Nikki is one of those unfortunate persons with borderline personality disorder (BPD)...and they are more common. It is a term that sounds innocent enough, but it's as close to psychotic as you can get and still be seen by most folks as somewhat normal. It is an illness that cannot be cured by medication, and psychiatric talk-therapy has had little success with this biologically hard-wired condition.

Unfortunately, I know two people with borderline personality disorder: one I avoid completely because I can, and the other...well, that person I have to deal with fairly often. Neither is as bad as Nikki, but Nikki's problems are significantly exacerbated by lack of an unconditionally loving family to support her, alcohol abuse, major illegal drug abuse, and the stress of raising three small children entirely on her own.

If you love this book and want to know more about borderline personality disorder, check it out on the Internet. While you're at it, learn more about bipolar illness and psychosis, too.

This was my first Nancy Werlin book. I can hardly wait to read more. I love the fact that she deals with tantalizing topics at the fringe of the human condition...and she does it so well!