A word: The work reviewed contains frank and violent depictions of child molestation and physical abuse.
Plot:
Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright comes into the world after her fifteen-year-old mother, Anney, is hurt in a car accident. Anney remains unconscious throughout the delivery but recovers. Granny and Aunt Ruth have tried to smooth things over with little Ruth Anne’s birth certificate, because Anney isn’t married. It doesn’t go well. It’s still stamped “illegitimate.”
The Boatwright clan is close-knit. Bone remarks how safe and comfortable she felt around her myriad aunts, uncles, and cousins. Granny was the only one who would tell her anything about her daddy. She ran him out of town before Bone was born.
Anney marries again, and Bone’s little sister, Reese, is born. Her husband dies in a car accident.
Another man starts paying attention to her at her waitress job. At first, Anney hesitates. She doesn’t want to marry and lose another man.
After two years, they marry while Anney can still look good in a wedding dress.
Something happens to Bone while they’re in the car in the hospital parking lot, while they’re waiting to hear about her mother and the baby. She doesn’t understand; Daddy Glen touches her and himself. She is five years old.
Tragedy strikes. Mama will be coming home without the baby boy. And she won’t have any more.
Thoughts:
The book is a semi-autobiographical portrait of a girl growing up in poverty in 1950s South Carolina. The depictions of abuse are harrowing, but told frankly and with as little sensationalism as possible. Bone doesn’t understand much of what is happening. She understands the beatings, of course, but thinks she has brought them on herself.
Bone knows that her mother, Anney, loves her. Anney also loves Daddy Glen. She knows Daddy Glen beats Bone, but she loves Daddy Glen. She leaves him, but goes back. During the summer, she sends Bone to stay with an aunt who is ill, then another aunt. At a funeral, the signs of Daddy Glen’s beating are discovered, and the uncles beat him hard enough to send him to the hospital.
This love for Bone v. the love for Daddy Glen forms the central conflict of the book. The reader doesn’t doubt Anney loves her daughters. And yet—and yet—
The book’s strength lies in its characterizations. The aunts and uncles are colorful and enjoyable, even if they’re not the people you might invite for dinner. Bone’s mother, grandmother, and various aunts, uncles, and cousins are larger than life and, at the same time, vulnerable and all too human. Most of the uncles have spent time in jail for public intoxication and/or fighting.
The setting is also telling:
“Where I was born—Greenville, South Carolina—smelled like nowhere else I’ve been. Cut wet grass, split green apples, baby shit and beer bottles, cheap makeup and motor oil. Everything was ripe, everything was rotting. Hound dogs butted my calves. People shouted in the distance; crickets boomed in my ears. That country was beautiful, I swear to you, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Beautiful and terrible.”
The ending is stark and devastating, but it makes sense.
The book won a National Book Award in 1992. It was also adapted into a Showtime Networks Film in 1996.
It’s difficult for me to make a recommendation about Bastard out of Carolina. On the one hand, it is an engaging read told through the eyes of a young girl. It ends when she is about twelve. Her family is warm and loving, but also sad and just a bit crazy. The violence and abuse make for difficult reading.
Bio: Dorothy Allison (1949-2024) grew up in extreme poverty and suffered abuse at the hands of her stepfather. She was the first in her family to finish high school and went on to Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) on a National Merit Scholarship. She holds a master’s degree in anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York.
She published collections of poetry and short stories, The Women Who Hate Me (1983, expanded 1991) and Trash (1988). Bastard out of Carolina is her first novel.
Title: Bastard out of Carolina
Author: Dorothy Allison (1949-2024)
First published: 1992
Length: novel
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 