From Publishers Weekly
Allison spikes her critically acclaimed first novel, a National Book Award nominee, with pungent characters, and saturates it with a sense of its setting--Greenville, S.C. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
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.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Bone is the nickname of a sensitive young girl in rural South Carolina who lives with her mother, stepfather, sister, scores of kin and many other rich characters. Author/reader Dorothy Allison's soft Carolina dialect may be a bit refined for her story. The abridgment has two problems. The reading sketches out several characters fairly well, but loses too many others. The plot jumps from family story to family story without adequate transition. As a result, sumptuous individuals and pivotal events elapse without impact. In spite of the abridgment problems, Allsion develops the pathos of Bone's heavy emotional baggage and carries the reading to a climactic ending that makes the listener's heart pound. D.W.K. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
A 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 novel, the narrative meanders through the story of the Boatwright clan. Bone reflects on her strong and independent (if hard-treated) aunts and appreciates family strength, love, and loyalty while recognizing that the outside world sees the Boatwrights as antisocial trash. Compassionate if not very compelling; after the often searing power of Allison's short stories, she seems not to have claimed her voice so much as tamed it. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen
At her birth in Greenville, South Carolina, Ruth Anne Boatwright is nick-named Bone because she is so long and skinny. Because her Mama is fifteen and single when Bone is born, a stamp in "oversized red-inked block letters" reading "Illegitimate" blots the bottom of Bone's birth certificate, and Bone's Mama never gives up her efforts to have this stamp removed. The Boatwright family is large and stormy, especially Bone's talented, handsome, hard-drinking, womanizing uncles. Granny Boatwright and her daughters are known for how beautiful they used to be, before too many children and not enough money carved deep lines into their faces and bent their backs. Bone understands and supports her Mama's desperate need for love until it leaves Bone with scars that won't go away. Bastard Out of Carolina is an emotionally stunning story of criminally familiar pain; of the strength and struggle it takes to survive it; and of the importance of having at least one person smart enough to tell you to "get out there and do things, girl. Make people nervous and make your old aunt glad." -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.


Mira Sorvino
It's just a brilliant novel.

ANNOTATION

This fiercely moving, unforgettable first novel tells the story of Ruth Anne Boatwright -- called Bone by her family -- a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Bone's story is inseparable from that of her family, the notorious Boatwright clan. This tender yet disturbing tale is a harrowing story of family violence and incest that is "simply stunning" --New York Times Book Review

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

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.

Library Journal

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.

George Garrett

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

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"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." — Barbara Kingsolver