Customer Reviews

Rule of the Bone

5 star:		(145)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I teach high school English, mostly American lit, and without having read this book myself I recommended it to one of my sophomore students for a free-reading unit we were doing. He read it in three days and loved it. I quickly finished the book I had chosen (A STAR CALLED HENRY) and picked up his copy of RULE. I had never read Banks, except for a few short stories here and there, but now I am a complete convert (so much so, in fact, that I'm reading CLOUDSPLITTER now, which makes RULE seem like an even better book than i first thought). i noticed that one reviewer wrote that Banks had gotten the voice of the narrator all wrong. That reader apparently does not spend the majority of his waking hours with teenagers. I do. And let me say that the narration is dead on in every respect. So often critics claim to have discovered the next CATCHER IN THE RYE or the heir to HUCKLEBERRY FINN and never before have I agreed until now. RULE OF THE BONE is a beautiful novel with something real at stake, perhaps something more real than Holden Caufield's three-day ramble (and certainly more engaging). Bone's journey to himself (his "I-self") is visceral and funny and sad and moving. I plan to teach it next year in my modern novel course.

Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks was very unpredictable and thus made it very enjoyable to read. The style of writing and storytelling made me feel I was in the journey through life with the main character Bone. Banks' verbose style and lack of punctuation constucted Bone in a very accurate manner. Many young people can relate especially if they are in the same situation as Bone. Also, the slim chances of unusual events taking place became normal in the novel and later in the story it turned out to be imminent. The traditional story-line was broken in many different ways. Don't try to guess what will happen. Read the book. You will be surprised how many plot-twisting occurances happen.

Saying Rule of the Bone is typical Banks is a good thing. He writes compelling stories with an edge that never lets you feel too comfortable or become too close to the characters since they're generally such sad human beings. My wife says he's smug, I say he's a realist. However, compared to other Banks novels, Bone is a joyride. Plenty or lighter moments and a protagonist who's spunk makes him worth cheering for if not quasi-likeable. While not a fast read, it's quite literal and moves along as quickly as the locales of the story change. Again, Banks explores familial relationships and how they're affected by societal conditions. Perhaps the only thing keeping this book from getting five stars from me is the knowledge that Continental Drift and the Sweet Hereafter exist. Every time I read a Banks book, besides Cloudsplitter, I wonder why he isn't a more popular writer with the status quo. He's a great writer and this is a good book.

I found this book in my school library missorted and looking a little battered. I checked it out and since the first page I couldn't put it down!

It starts off well and doesn't lose momentum. Filled with a sad story of a runaway teen eventually finding his way to Jamaica to see his biological father after being kicked out of his home by his moms new boyfriend.

He gets caught up in drugs, stealing and everything imaginable! It's a book you wont be able to put down, so buy it and create some spare time. It wont let you down!

The Rule of The Bone was a very good exciting book. The books language isof the common teenager and the behavior of the main character is real. In the first half of the book many can relate or feel for what he is going on in the characters life. The atmosphere is fimiliar and the people are as well. The main character goes on many crazy adventures and experiences alot of crazy things. The second half of the book is a bit random. When the main character ends up in a foreign country it is hard to understand why the writer chose to go this way. This part of the book is weird and does not feeel as familiar as the first part mainly because of the setting being in another country. The ending could have been better and the the reason for him going to another country could have been explained more It is a bit unrealistic. Overall it is a pretty good book for the fact that you don not know whats going to happen next, everytime you read a page you wonder what the next will reveal.

There are many people such as myself who aren't into reading as much as others. As for me I have never been much of a person who will open up a book just because i want to and when i was asked to read Rule of the Bone as an assignment I felt overwhelmed with the thought of having to read a book. In many matters, this book will capture anyones attention right from the start. It is true that Russell Banks doesn't show great punctuation throughout the book, but if you really understand a teenager you would know that this is truly how a teen speaks and writes. As a teenager growing up I was faced with the temptation of smoking out because of my peers and Banks was only letting the world know a little more on how nowadays the pressure of dealing with drugs is a lot greater and in our everyday life. Most can say that this book will catch anyones attention right from the start because what we see and hear today is the basic reality that Banks created in his book. I would recommend any one mostly guys to read this book. I know some people are like me that won't be caught with a book but trust me you'll enjoy this one. You'll enjoy it greatly because it is very lucid and for parents who want to understand the mind of a troubled teen or any teen you should definitely read this book. Thanks Mr.Overfield for making us read this because I think this is the only book I've actually gone all the way to the end before putting it down and getting bored with it after the first couple of pages.

Rule of the Bone might just be one of the most entertaining books you might read. The story of Chappie "Bone" takes so many twists and turns; and just when you think you know the flow of the story, you're thrown back by weird characters, or situations that you never thought would occur. You'll be at the edge of your seat, staying up late nights while reading this book. You'll go on a journey with a 14 year old, who goes through TONS of obstacles that a kid that age would never normally EVER experience.

A good novel for anyone to read is one that keeps the reader interested at all times. Constant suspense is a key feature, along with possible connections between the events, characters and the reader. In Russell Banks' Rule of the Bone, Banks writes in a unique style, formatting the main characters thoughts and expressions in ways that most readers do not get to experience. His unpredictable atmosphere creates a suspenseful and thrilling sequence of events that keeps the reader involved at all times. Rule of the Bone is an inimitable novel that no one should surpass their chance to read. Because of its exclusive writing style and many possible connections between the book and the reader, Rule of the Bone, is by far, one of the best novels that an English class or anyone is able to read.

Rule of the Bone Review
The novel, Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks is a hard hitting book, which captures the reader's attention, by portraying the turbulence of adolescence. Its main character Chappie, (Bone) is today's version of Holden Caulfield. His tormented life and struggle to adulthood provides a story for young adults to relate to, similar to Catcher in the Rye.
This book takes place in the struggling working class neighborhood of Plattsburg, NY during the mid 1990's. In the beginning many of the characters wrestle with a hard economic life, making enough money for rent is the priority. Chappie is a young man who steals to survive in this harsh world. The book covers many clashes between him and his family, the law, and especially his stepfather. The tough realistic setting adds to the power of this book.
Chappie's mom and stepfather see him as a disease. His anger is too hard for them to handle. Russell Banks slowly introduces the thoughts behind this anger, which Chappie is trying to avoid. In time his anger reaches a point where he has to leave his house and try and find another place to live. This move allows him to learn something about himself. Chappie starts a life of crime before he leaves home; after that, his crimes get more intense. He wants to change his ways, but he doesn't know how. New friendships cause him to become even more of a criminal. This shows how peer pressure is so influential in an adolescent life. When he changes his name from Chappie to Bone he leaves behind the past and looks towards the future. Banks uses the symbol of Chappie's tattoo to describe the turning point in his life.
Chappie has been trying to find his father for a long time, which has been a challenge. When he goes to Jamaica, he finds someone who looks like him. "I know him. I know his face, way down deep inside me, like in my chest I know him. And for the first time I understood why I'd decided to follow I-Man to Jamaica. I knew he'd be here. It's my father! My real father! My mouth flopped open and I couldn't say anything but in my mind I'm like calling him in this little boy's voice, Daddy! Daddy! Over here, it's me, your son Chappie!" Because Chappie left his home in upstate New York, because he met I-Man, he found his father when in Jamaica with I-Man. This was one of his greatest achievements, finding his father, which changed everything.
The themes of this book rebellion, friendship, and independence represent the adolescent life. At first rebellion is the most dominant idea. Once Chappie meets Russ, friendship expands and becomes the most controlling idea. The most significant friend is I-Man, the one he meets later because this one doesn't abandon him, like the rest of them do. Through the development of this friendship, Banks is able to introduce the ideas of trust and confidence. Only when Bone experienced trust and confidence was he able to move on.
Banks uses dialogue that captures tough vocabulary of the way people talk in today's world. An example of this dialogue is when I-Man and Evening Star (Bones dad's girlfriend) are in Jamaica and Evening Star says "Greetings, Rasta! Respect, mon. Evert'ing irie, mon?" (280) After awhile I-Man said, "De bwoy him be Baby Doc, an' him lookin' fe him fodder Papa, Doc." (280) Banks uses dialogue that real Jamaicans use, so it seemed much realer, as if you were there. If he didn't use this kind of dialogue, it wouldn't have had as much of an impact on me.
Rule of the Bone doesn't hold anything back.

Chappie, the 14-year-old narrator of this powerful novel, is a Huckleberry Finn for the 1990s, with a mohawk haircut and a nose ring.

"Anyhow my life got interesting you might say the summer I turned fourteen and was heavy into weed but I didn't have any money to buy it with so I started looking around the house all the time for things I could sell but there wasn't much."

The house is a trailer in Au Sable, New York, that he's lived in all his life "so I knew the place like I knew the inside of my mouth." But somehow he's overlooked an amazing stash in the closet  a gun and half a dozen plastic bags full of old coins.

His mother and stepfather are both alcoholics, his father abandoned him when he was 5 and his stepfather sexually abused him, which Chappie has never told his mother. Chappie is deeply into anger and rebellion and has no sense of self-worth. When the thefts are discovered, Chappie slams out of the house.

Homeless, Chappie begins dealing weed to keep his spot on the couch in his friend Russ' squalid apartment, which Russ shares with a revolving group of thuggish bikers. He drifts, getting high and hanging out at the mall until the bikers begin boosting stereo equipment. Russ wants in but Chappie wants no part of it.

"For them [adults] I guess what was right was what you could get away with and what was wrong was what you couldn't, but it made me feel stupid that I didn't know it too. It was like the difference between dealing small-load weed and dealing crank  there was one, I knew but I didn't know what it was. The whole thing was scary."

Chappie determines not "to be any worse a criminal than I already was" but the whole thing ends in conflagration, leaving him not only homeless but presumed dead. Like Huck, he takes advantage of this, thinking to start a new life, grows out his hair, gets a crossed-bones tattoo and sheds his old name, calling himself "Bone."

He and Russ, after an interlude with a couple of crackheads in the bus that crashed in The Sweet Hereafter, hide out in a summer house for a while until the place is trashed and Russ decides to return to real life. Bone strikes out on his own. He's picked up by a pedophile who appeared earlier in the novel and manages to abscond with the pedophile's cash and his little girl captive, Froggy.

Bone returns to the bus which is now sweet-smelling and occupied by the book's Jim character, a run-away migrant worker from Jamaica, a pot-steeped Rastafarian who calls himself I-Man. Awed by I-Man's evident wisdom and peaceful sense of himself, Bone clings to him as friend and father figure, absorbing as much Rastafarian mysticism as he can. Eventually he travels to Jamaica with I-Man, after returning Froggy to the crackhead mother who sold her and trying one last time to reconcile with his own mother.

Banks is clearly familiar with the Jamaica the tourists don't see. Bone, meeting up with his real father, lives on the edge between the rich white residents and the black Jamaicans who score off them as best they can. Here is a world as brutal and unforgiving as the one Bone left behind and alien too. But Bone sees opportunity.

He eyes the white tourists "who I figured would be relieved to buy some ganja from a white kid who spoke regular English instead of having to deal with a scary black Jamaican like I-Man....and then I wondered if I-Man'd already figured that out long ago..." His view of I-Man is being revised.

If the story sounds bleak, well, it is, and Bone's reunion with his "Pa" doesn't turn out so well either, but Bone's deadpan voice is so full of life and humor and pluck that the reader is swept up in his harrowing adventures and comes to believe in the insights he works out for himself.

Banks deals unflinchingly with the seamy underworld of runaways where adults are predators and goes far more deeply into issues of race than would ever have occurred to Twain. Bone, after working hard at becoming a Rastafarian, cuts off his dreadlocks and embraces his white American identity in a spirit of guilt. "I knew if I wasn't white, if I'd been a real Rasta-boy like I'd been pretending to be I'd be dead now."

Banks' vernacular voice never flags or falters. Bone is a real boy, petulant, bratty and impulsive, also brave and loyal. But mostly he is confused; struggling to find his place in the world and something or someone to believe in. Rule of the Bone is a book readers will devour with laughter, pain and hope.