In House Rules, Rachel Son­tag is asked, ​“So, who’s the mon­ster?” She replies, ​“My father,” I said. ​“He plays the lead­ing mon­ster.” In this fast-paced, well-writ­ten mem­oir, the nuance of Sontag’s emo­tion­al abuse as a child reared in an upper-mid­dle- class Jew­ish home by a physi­cian father and social-work­er moth­er is reen­act­ed. Son­tag astute­ly notes that the plight of the abused child derives from ​“occu­py­ing the cen­ter of someone’s uni­verse,” in her case, her father’s. Her sis­ter, in con­trast, is the neglect­ed child whose role it is to remain safe­ly invis­i­ble. Both sib­lings are impris­oned by an inef­fec­tu­al moth­er who fails to pro­tect. Son­tag strug­gles to set her­self free, only to learn that she has inter­nal­ized some of the evil through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the aggres­sor. She enables the audi­ence to pal­pa­bly sense the sub­tle divide between ​“nor­mal” parental neg­a­tiv­i­ty and emo­tion­al pun­ish­ment. We are reward­ed for our efforts through Sontag’s resilience. Son­tag leaves the read­er rec­og­niz­ing traces of her tale with­in their own life and those around them.