Wetumpka Library Blog

Book Bites book review by Debbie Herbert February 17, 2009

Bastard Out of Carolina

      Although it’s been several years since I’ve read “Bastard Out of Carolina” it’s the kind of story that sticks with you.  Probably because Bone is a character you will come to care about.

      Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright is coming of age in a family that is poor and wild but decent people in their love for each other. Her uncles have been in and out of prison, her Mom isn’t particular about things like marriage before children, and the women can cuss and hold their own with the men.  The novel reminds me of “Little Altars Everywhere” by Rebecca Wells in that it starts out humorous with eventually touches of foreshadowing that there is something darker to emerge.

      For reasons no one can understand, Bone’s mother falls for a drifter who lies and has trouble holding a job.  And so it is that “Daddy Glenn” comes into Bone’s life.  She doesn’t like him one bit from the very beginning and is struck by the disproportionally large hands on his small body.

      Those hands will soon be a torment to her as the book goes hurtling to the inevitable conclusion.  What is even more gripping, however, is the relationship between Bone and her mother.  That ending is a surprise best left for the reader to discover.

      Published in 1992, this first novel by Dorothy Allison was a National Book Award finalist.  She is also the author of Trash, The Women Who Hate Me, Skin:  Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature, and Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.

      A quick look at amazon.com shows over 300 customer reviews of five stars (the highest possible rating) and a list of over 100 nonfiction books that have cited Bastard Out of Carolina.

      From her own web site is information on the author:  “Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. Now living in Northern California with her partner Alix and her teenage son, Wolf Michael, she describes herself as a feminist, a working class story teller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet and a happily born-again Californian.”

      Allison will soon publish her newest work, She, Who Is.