Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison

1992 • 309 pages

Ratings34

Average rating4.1

Essential Edition handsomely packaged with french flaps, rough fronts, high-quality paper, and a distinctive cover lookGreenville 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 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.

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Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Joana

Great book. The movie is different, but that is not unnusual. A learn more about the character Bone and the rest of the family.

November 9, 2022

Brenna

One sentence synopsis... A harrowing semi-autobiographical story of Ruth Anne, ‘Bone' Boatwright, a young girl growing up entrenched in poverty, family dysfunction, and sexual abuse in the south.

Read it if you like... although it's now popular to put a poor, ‘white trash', female character as the center of a story (a la, ‘Winter's Bone' or ‘My Absolute Darling') this book was one of the earlier ones to accomplish it and the only one of those it's compared to written by a woman. Also a good read for people who liked the heartbreak of ‘A Little Life'. Very different but Bone is another character who will stick with me like Jude.

Dream casting... planning on checking out the 1996 movie version with a young Jenna Malone as Bone.

September 17, 2020

Koko

This novel was a tough read and left me feeling angry and hurt afterwards. “Cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty.” When Glenn Said this about Bone, I could have swore he was talking about himself. Nobody in this story was likeable except for poor Bone who was unfortunate to be born into this family. Everybody in her family were too blind by false love and drunkenness to see what was going on. Great read but I won't pick up this book again.

July 19, 2019