Bastard Out of Carolina

by Dorothy Allison

Overview

Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family -- rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as "Bone," a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught up in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious - until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452269576
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/08/1993
Series:	Contemporary Fiction, Plume Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.88(d)
Lexile:	900L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dorothy Allison is the acclaimed author of the nationally bestselling novel Bastard Out of Carolina, which was a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. The recipient of numerous awards, she lives in Northern California.

What People are Saying About This

Barbara Kingsolver

"For anyone who has ever felt the contempt of a self-righteous world, this book will resonate within you like a gospel choir. For anyone who hasn't, this book will be an education."

Blanche McCrary Boyd

"Dorothy Allison has an elegantly unpretentious style, raw intensity and a great big heart. In Bastard Out of Carolina she tells a horrific story without malice or self-pity. I read her work with admiration and with respect."

Editorial Reviews

Allison's remarkable country voice emerges in a first novel spiked with pungent characters ranging from the slatternly to the grotesque, and saturated with sense of place -- Greenville, S.C. Ruth Anne Boatwright, 13, got the nickname "Bone" at birth, when she was tiny as a knucklebone, and the tag acquires painful derivatives, like "Bonehead.'' While her mother, Annie, a waitress, tries vainly to get the word "illegitimate'' scrubbed from Bone's birth certificate, her tobacco-spitting granny reminds her she's a bastard. The identity of her real father, whom granny drove away, is kept from her. Surrounded by loving aunts and uncles, Bone still endures ridicule (she's homely, she has no voice for gospel singing) and -- from vicious Daddy Glen, her mother's new husband -- beatings and sexual abuse. Bone takes refuge in petty crime, like breaking into Woolworth's, and finds her truest friend in unmarried Aunt Raylene, who once had a great love for another woman. Annie gently defends Daddy Glen, blaming her daughter, until the tale's inevitably brutal climax. Mental and physical cruelty to women forms a main theme, illuminated by the subplot of pathetic albino Shannon Pearls, her story rife with Southern gothic overtones. Allison, author of the well-received short story collection "Trash," doesn't condescend to her "white trash'' characters; she portrays them with understanding and love.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Set in the rural South, this tale centers around the Boatwright family, a proud and closeknit clan known for their drinking, fighting, and womanizing. Nicknamed "Bone" by her Uncle Earle, Ruth Anne is the bastard child of Anney Boatwright, who has fought tirelessly to legitimize her child. When she marries Glen, a man from a good family, it appears that her prayers have been answered. However, Anney suffers a miscarriage and Glen begins drifting. He develops a contentious relationship with Bone and then begins taking sexual liberties with her. Embarrassed and unwilling to report these unwanted advances, Bone bottles them up and acts out her confusion and shame. Unaware of her husband's abusive behavior, Anney stands by her man. Eventually, a violent encounter wrests Bone away from her stepfather. In this first novel, Allison creates a rich sense of family and portrays the psychology of a sexually abused child with sensitivity and insight. Recommended for general fiction collections. --Kimberly G. Allen, National Assn. of Home Builders Lib., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal

When I finished Bastard Out of Carolina I wanted to blow a bugle to alert the reading public that a wonderful work of fiction by a major new talent has arrived on the scene....The technical skill in both large things and details, so gracefully executed as to be always at the service of the story and its characters and thus almost invisible, is simply stunning, about as close to flawless as any reader could ask for and any writer, at any age or stage, could hope for and aspire to.... The literary territory that Dorothy Allison has set out to explore is dangerous turf, a minefield strewn with booby traps where the least false step could lead to disaster. It is a great pleasure to see her succeed, blithe and graceful as Baryshnikov in performance....Allison can be deeply moving, yet she is never sentimental.... Please reserve a seat of honor at the high table of the art of fiction for Dorothy Allison. --New York Times

George Garrett