Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

It’s an irrational view, but as Allison explains, the lives of these characters is lived according to the basic principles of “salt of the earth” Southerners:Įverything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. The problem is that he resents Bone because he sees her as competition for Ann’s love. He loves her like a gambler loves a fast racehorse or a desperate man loves whiskey. Perhaps the problem is the way in which Glen loves Ann Boatwright: Problems begin when Bone’s mother Ann falls in love with Glen and marries him. Bone has a sister, Reese, the daughter of Ann and her first husband who died in a car accident.

Her sisters are women who married young to men like their brothers. Bone is the illegitimate daughter of Ann Boatwright (hence the “bastard” moniker of the title) and the Boatwright family are archetypal working class Southerners of the 1950’s – Ann’s brothers are hard working, hard living men fond of drinking and fighting. The main story line of Bastard Out of Carolina concerns the relationship of Bone Boatwright with her stepfather, Glen Waddell. Yet this novel was a finalist for the National Book Award, certainly an astute reader award.Īnd, I think, the NBA was right in its high estimation of this novel. These are flaws that, I have said, astute readers would note. As one reads Bastard Out of Carolina, frequently one runs into passages that have more the raw feel of the author’s journals rather than the polished feel of fictionalized experience. Finally, there are, by various accounts, semi-autobiographical elements in this work.

The novel rambles, often needlessly, and smacks of having been pieced together from previous drafts, a short story (or perhaps a group of stories) – and not always smoothly. But Bone Boatwright and Scout Finch have so little in common in terms of their life experiences that any likeness between them as characters or as narrators is superficial at best.Īstute readers will also note that, like Mockingbird, Bastard Out of Carolina has structural flaws that have been glossed over rather than solved. Both characters possess a certain headlong quality that can seem endearing. There is little about Ruth Ann Boatwright, known within her family as Bone, that will remind readers of Scout Finch only in a certain feistiness at given moments. One of the blurbs for Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina likens its narration to that of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (image courtesy Goodreads)