{"id":3142,"date":"2014-10-28T07:22:49","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T11:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2014-12-13T07:42:28","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T12:42:28","slug":"10-28-14-bastard-out-of-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3142","title":{"rendered":"10-28-14 ****Bastard Out of Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bastard<\/a>By Dorothy Allison<\/strong> – The West Windsor Library\u2019s annual book sale is where I stock up on books I should have read a long time ago. Set in Greenville, South Carolina, this debut novel, published in 1992, was probably somewhat more shocking as a tale of parental oversight and abuse at the time, and so beautifully written it\u2019s no surprise it was a National Book Award finalist. It remains a powerful and empathetic portrayal of class and gender differences in the 1950\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Prior to this book, Allison had published two volumes of poetry sharing the same main title, The Women Who Hate Me<\/em>, and it\u2019s interesting how she\u2019s able to tamp that back and stay in the voice of the pre-teen first-person narrator, Ruth Anne Boatwright, whom everyone calls Bone, even as she reveals great depth and precision of language. Bone both lovingly and mercilessly describes the hard-drinking, violence-prone Boatwright men and the frustrated and hard-working Boatwright women. They may be poor\u2014\u201ctrash\u201d people call them and they call themselves\u2014but they are tender toward Bone and her only thin protection against her mother\u2019s new husband.<\/p>\n

You may be familiar with the 1996 movie version of the novel, but I haven\u2019t seen it. Anjelica Huston directed, and it starred Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ron Eldard, Christina Ricci, and Dermot Mulroney. Jena Malone played Bone. A 100% critics rating from Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>!
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