Bastard Out Of Carolina

Bastard out of Carolina

From Library JournalSet 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.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.Tired of being labeled white trash, Ruth Anne Boatwright--a South Carolina bastard who is attached to the indomitable women in her mother's family--longs to escape from her hometown, and especially from Daddy Glen and his mean-spirited jealousy. A first novel. 15,000 first printing.From Publishers WeeklyAllison'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.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Kirkus ReviewsA girl comes of age in '50's South Carolina fighting the label trash'' and the violent advances of her stepfather: an overly familiar story as Allison (Trash, 1988) handles the material in a surprisingly nostalgic way. When narrator Ruth Ann Boatwright (nicknamed Bone) is born to 15-year-old unmarried Anney, the word ILLEGITIMATE'' is stamped in big red letters on the birth certificate; for years, Anney will stubbornly try to get a new document without the glaring stigma. She will also try to make a decent home for her two daughters, marrying Glen Waddell, who--the black sheep of a prominent local family--admires the heavy-drinking, brawling Boatwright men. Glen adores Anney but the Boatwrights have their reservations: the boy could turn like whiskey in a bad barrel.'' Indeed, not only does he have trouble holding a job but soon makes Bone a scapegoat for his frustrations: she suffers beatings and sexual molestation, keeping silent in order not to spoil her mother's hard-won happiness. Though the family triangle is the dramatic center of the no