Bastard Out of Carolina [Paperback]

Dorothy Allison (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Longman Publishing Group (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801331463
• ISBN-13: 978-0801331466
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (177 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,848,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dorothy Allison is the bestselling author of several novels including Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller, and Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure. The recipient of numerous awards, she has been the subject of many profiles and a short documentary film of her life, Two or Three Things but Nothing For Sure.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Six stars, anyone?, May 4, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bastard Out of Carolina (Paperback)

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.

58 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Heart-Wrenching, February 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bastard out of Carolina (Paperback)

I read this book as part of a college literature assignment. Bastard Out of Carolina is a well-written, deeply moving, and unforgettable novel about a young southern girl's struggle with physical and sexual abuse, along with the stigma of being labeled "white trash" and "illegitimate." Ms. Allison's characters are vibrant and alive, especially the young girl, Bone, who poignantly tells the tale of her tormented youth. For all its literary worth, this is not a book that I would have read on my own. The story is deeply disturbing, not only in its content but in the underlying hopelessness of tone. One feels an overwhelming instinct to cradle Bone in one's arms to protect her from her frustrated, jealous, and emotionally disturbed stepfather and from her mother's senseless abandonment. Bone's reactions of burning anger, festering hatred, and perverted fantasies, along with her resultant self image, compound the hopelessness of her young life. Salvation and vindication can only be acquired through her love of gospel music...and although she's told repeatedly that she can't sing, her heart yearns and pleads to God for the gift of song. But the gift of salvation through Jesus that God freely offers is never accepted, and only Bone knows why. Instead of salvation, Bone finds a haven in the home of her lesbian aunt, Raylene. While Raylene is a compassionate, strong, and loving woman, the reader is left with the impression at the conclusion of the story that Bone struggles with her experiences for the rest of her life. Perhaps the quote by James Baldwin at the beginning of the book says it best: "People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead." In the end, no matter what injustices we face in this life, we all will have to answer for how we choose to live our lives. We can choose to be defeated, or we can choose to overcome. Bone's true vindication remains irretrievably in her hands.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overcoming stigmas in Southern Culture, February 24, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Bastard Out of Carolina (Paperback)

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