Bastard Out of Carolina

This is an awesome book. I love to read and at this point, I have read so much - I am a hard to please reader. The prose is simple, yet it will grab and hold your attention. In fact, before I comment on the story, let me say that if you are an aspiring writer - this is a good book to read just to see what simple, yet very engaging prose looks like. I don't care what kind of writer you are, if you have to communicate anything to anyone in "words," you will benefit from reading this.

The story is told from the perspective of a child, but as an adult (and this is definitely adult reading), you won't be able to put it down. There are summaries that I won't rehash, but let me say this - one thing I can't shake is that throughout the book, I wanted to occasionally question Bone's mother about her choices. I found myself wishing that she had made different decisions - especially the decisions that hurt her children and caused her embarrassment. There are also a few racial references in here that some will find disturbing - but it was a reality of the time period in which this book is set. If you are looking for a book to make you smile or laugh, this is not it. But one motif that I did find encouraging was that of family. Throughout, Bone's extended family is a strong one - despite the hardships they face and the disagreements they have. Unfortunately, the love of her family couldn't protect her from everything.

Although this is about a poor, white, southern family, there's something in the story that brings to mind one of my favorite books,"The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison. I mention that to say, if you like Toni Morrison, I think you'll enjoy this book. Toni Morrison's prose is quite a bit more complex, but the sad feeling you get when reading about Toni Morrison's characters is similar to the feeling I get when reading about Bone and her family. Bastard Out of Carolina also shares similar themes with "The Bluest Eye" - sexual abuse, the feeling of living life as one of the seemingly "undesirables" (white trash, black, etc.), tragedy, family and no happy endings.

First off, I am from Greenville County, SC. I no longer live there, but I can say that Allison captured the setting perfectly. She described places I've seen, the kinds of people I've seen. But every county (north and south of the Mason-Dixon line) has its "white trash," though it seems to be a Southern stereotype.

The language of this book is incredible. I've noticed in some of the reviews, the readers suggested more editing. This is told from the eyes of a young rural girl. She does not have the vocabulary of an English professor. I love that people who have only had reviews for Amazon published can actually commment on the writing ability of someone with the talent of Allison. Another reviewer said the book was depressing. If she needed a "feel-good" story, she should stick with the CHICK-LIT shelves. Life isn't always fun or humorous or happy in the end.

Yowtch! This searing quasi-autobiography dressed up as fiction is worth every painful moment it takes to get through it. The book's title says a lot: it's the story of the childhood of a "white trash bastard" and her battles against physical and sexual abuse. I wonder: was this the first book that inaugurated the era of so many memoirs about childhood abuse that Oprah eventually elevated to mythic levels?
Bastard out of Carolina is a scarey story with memorable characters who will haunt readers nearly as thoroughly as they haunted Bone, the child protagonist: the violent ones, the jealous ones, the just plain weird ones, the inexplicable ones...
This is not a book with a happy ending. One gets the sense that the end of the story hasn't been written - possibly because the author hasn't lived it yet.
Outstanding. Worth 6 stars.

Having grown up in the south myself I saw the stigmas portrayed in Allison's book to be true. It is hard to express to people who were not in this environment what it was like, but Allison has done this in her book. Basterd out of Carolina is an excellent book in that it tells the story of "Bone" Boatwright, and her life as poor white trash in the south. Bone's speech patterns in telling the story are so clear and easy to read that it adds to the books authenticity and to it's believability. She tells about her mother's struggle to remove the illigitimate label from her birth cirtificate, and how this affected her life. Bone had to fight to prove herself to the world around her. She didn't want to be the bastard people called her, she didn't want to have people control her through their labels. Included in this struggle is the story of overcoming the abuse she receives from "Daddy Glen" her step father. He beats her and molests her, under the guise that she asked for it. It is only through the help of her uncles and her aunts that she is able to rise above the abuse, and the abandonment from her mother and become the person she wants to be. The book is partly autobiographical on the part of Allison, and she has used her own experiences to tell a powerful story of strength. I reccomend this book to people who enjoyed books by Fannie Flagg, and anyone who has had to deal with abuse and/or abandonment

Yowtch! This searing quasi-autobiography dressed up as fiction is worth every painful moment it takes to get through it. The book's title says a lot: it's the story of the childhood of a "white trash bastard" and her battles against physical and sexual abuse. I wonder: was this the first book that inaugurated the era of so many memoirs about childhood abuse that Oprah eventually elevated to mythic levels?
Bastard out of Carolina is a scarey story with memorable characters who will haunt readers nearly as thoroughly as they haunted Bone, the child protagonist: the violent ones, the jealous ones, the just plain weird ones, the inexplicable ones...
This is not a book with a happy ending. One gets the sense that the end of the story hasn't been written - possibly because the author hasn't lived it yet.
Outstanding. Worth 6 stars.