Dorothy Allison (1) (1949–2024)

This book is so raw, painful, gutsy, vivid and honest it leaves a hole in your heart.

Semi-autobiographical, this is the story of Bone, a child born to southern 'white trash' in Carolina, to a family where illegitimacy, criminality, abuse and hopelessness are a way of life, part of an inevitable cycle that passes from generation to generation.

But this is so much more than yet another survival memoir - this is flawless fiction which I would go so far as to say is of a standard up there with show more To Kill a Mockingbird (and I don't say that lightly).

Everything in this novel is so vivid. The physical surroundings - the dilapidated houses in the wrong part of town, the dirt ingrained in the window sills, the grassless yards, iced tea on rotting porches, trash floating up the weed encrusted river, the meals of biscuits and gravy, the country music peppering evenings on the porch, the hot days and cool nights. The Boatwright family themselves - the uncles who fall in and out of jobs and jail; the aunts with umpteen kids and no expectations; the forthright granny who pulls no punches; the mother who compartmentalises her love for her child from her love for the man who is destroying that child.

Allison so deftly gets under the skin of the complexities of poverty and abuse, of choiceless existences, of the strength and complications of family love in this environment, of how the impact of all of this can inevitably set out a child's path in life from far too early an age. It's makes for difficult reading in parts - it touches on realities most of us would prefer to sweep under the carpet than visualise, but it's profoundly impacting, bringing the hidden violence of our communities out into the open.

There's no warm, fuzzy feeling by the end of this book - this is a book to immensely respect and appreciate. I don't know about the rest of the world, but it's certainly under the radar in the UK, and most undeservedly so.

5 stars. An immense writing achievement. show less

there is so much more to this than i remember. the really awful abuse scene doesn't happen until near the very end, which means the rest is, like, 'i can probably live with this' abuse, and makes mama's love for bone more easy to believe. i remember carrying distrust for mama so was surprised when for most of the book she behaves pretty supportively, and i could believe she never knew the abuse was happening, or that it hadn't stopped, or that it had gotten as bad as it did. which is just a show more statement about me and her and about how we slowly accept things worsening without putting up a fight, like that frog in the proverbial pot of increasingly hot water. because if i was reading this for the first time i never would have thought that mama would have left bone after seeing what glen did to her. but really, she hadn't done nearly enough until then, so i should have seen it coming.

what a story about this family, that people consider to be poor white trash, but that (mostly) stand up in community for each other, support (mostly) each other through everything terrible that happens to them, whether the situations are their fault or not.

"Mama smiled, joked, slapped ass, and firmly passed back anything that looked like a down payment on something she didn't want to sell."

and i think the quote the entire book is built upon, the question this book was written to answer, or leave unanswered, depending on how you read it: "Could she love me and still hold him like that?" (4.5 stars)

from sept 2015:

this book is breathtaking. in the breadth and depth of the story and content as well as the writing. i wish i wasn't rushed to finish it because i want to read this one slowly; it deserves to be read slowly. it is so full of emotion (mostly pain, but some hope) that it should be read and sat with, and i didn't really get to do that. but i so appreciate what she has done here - shining a light on abuse and violence in a way that was so important when this was written. she shows such a personal story of living with violence, but also how the community supports and fails the people in it. how inescapable certain things seem - and maybe are - but also the potential people have.

i don't know what i want to say. this book is powerful and beautiful in all the ugliness and so hard and necessary to read. there are only (can i say that?) a few parts that were brutal (although in my memory of it, the entire book was this way, so they are awfully tough and they are memorable) to read, but oh there is so much heartbreak here. as a reader invested in the characters you want so badly for certain things to happen, but as a reader who wants the truth you know that it can't turn out that way. and it wrecks you.

"Mama smiled, joked, slapped ass, and firmly passed back anything that looked like a down payment on something she didn't want to sell."

"Moving gave me a sense of time passing and everything sliding, as if nothing could be held on to anyway. It made me feel ghostly, unreal and unimportant, like a box that goes missing and then turns up but you realize you never needed anything in it anyway."

"'They want you, oh yes, they want you. Till they get you. An't nothing in this world more useless than a hardworking religious fool. It an't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hereafter. I live in the here and now, and I need my sleep on a Sunday morning. But I'll tell you, Bone, I like it that they want me, Catholics and Baptists and Church of Gods and Methodists and Seventh-Day Adventists, all of them hungry for my dirty white hide, my pitiful human soul. Hell! None of them would give two drops of piss for me if I was already part of their saggy-assed congregations.'" (5 stars) show less

It was suggested that I read this for a Philosophies of Nonviolence class I'm taking at the moment. Part of me is pretty upset it took me 20 years to get around for this masterpiece - the other part realizes now is the time, as things tend to be.

Where do I start? The writing, wow the writing. Part of me wonders if I should ever pick up a pen again. Achingly beautiful in all the terrible, incredible ways that humanity IS. I understand, too, why this book has been banned in so many places - show more the truth hurts, indeed it does - but it needs to be heard. This is not an easy read. It's not beach reading. It's the kind of book you need to set aside for when you have a place of comfort to retreat to. You'll need to put it down and pick it back up again. You'll need to stop and write. And maybe go for a very, very long walk in between chapters.

I know the Boatwrights. I understand them.

Her website opens with these words:

Understand me.
What I am here for is to tell you stories that you may not want to hear.
What I am here for is to rescue my dead.
And to scare hell out of you now and then.
I was raised Baptist, I know how to do that.

I was raised Baptist, too. Everything, everything, everything about this book.

Also - the afterword? It's an entire class on fiction. Yes it is. show less

I loved this book so much! I'm familiar with the community she writes about, and I've never read anything that captured it better. Or much else that has tried, for that matter. In addition to her description of class in the south, she also presents the thoughts and concerns of a child so well, in a way that transcends the setting of the book. A classic for a reason.