By: Russell Banks Publisher: HarperPerennial Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: HarperPerennial Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 390 Publication Date: May 08, 1996 Release Date: March 27, 1996
Product Description: When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone."
He finds dangerous refuge with a group of biker-thieves, and then hides in the boarded-up summer house of a professor and his wife. He finally settles in an abandoned schoolbus with Rose, a child he rescues from a fast-talking pedophile. There Bone meets I-Man, an exiled Rastafarian, and together they begin a second adventure that takes the reader from Middle America to the ganja-growing mountains of Jamaica. It is an amazing journey of self-discovery through a world of magic, violence, betrayal and redemption.
A Coming of Age Story for Generation X (I think) Okay, every generation X,Y or Z (including my generation, the generation of '68) has to have its own coming of age stories, male or female. For this reviewer, always full of a sense of the necessity to understand his own misbegotten youth, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye explored the longings for understanding, companionship (female variety in my case) and power in that strange modern experience of growing up absurd- the teen years. Well, after reading Brother Banks Holden Caulfield better move over because he has company, very good company, in the coming of age field.
Strangely, my first exposure to the name Russell Banks was in a review that Larry McMurtry (he of Lonesome Dove, and a million other good novels, fame) did for The New York Review of Books. But at that time it was just a name. Then, as I was recently re-reading Nelson Algren's Walk on the Wild Side, I found that in the edition that I had Brother Banks had done the Foreword. Now I rank Algren right up there with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker in my literary pantheon so when Banks does a review that hits almost exactly all the points that have caused me to admire Algren I have one question. Isn't it about time to see what this writer is all about? And, friends, off a reading of this my first book of his I was not mistaken in my instinct.
Bank's young `searcher for truth' Bones, of dysfunctional family (sound familiar?), dope smoking and all set in upstate New York in the 1990's (and then switches somewhat erratically halfway through to Jamaica, the only weakness in the story) is exactly the kind of character one needs to explore in order to understand Generation X (I think that would be the correct designation, right?).
Using the currently fashionable literary trope of magical realism Banks goes through the whole catalogue of coming of age experiences as Bones looks for companionship (not necessarily automatically sexual, like in my youth), longings and personal power. Hey, didn't I just talk about those questions concerning Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield. I guess that is the point. Read this book if you want the current `skinny' on this perplexing issues of growing up absurd in modern society written with a very nice literary flair for a sense of time, place and class. Kudos, Brother Banks.
On my "Top Ten" list! Bank's exploration of a teenager's rite of passage into adulthood far exceeds anything of the kind I've previously read. His character's emotional journey from childhood into young adulthood, and his physical journey across continents, leaves me yearning to create this same sort of character who invites readers to mature along with them. I'm impressed, particularly, with an important secondary character, I-Man. Banks does an excellent job of bringing this character to life, from his dialect and sentence structure, to his mannerisms and sense of life priorities. You'll think about these characters long after you finish the book.
Deserves to be read This book started off with an amazing amount of potential. The first half the book takes you into the dark life of a boy dealing with issues far more than any adolescent should ever have to deal with. It starts off as an interesting insight into this boy and the unique friends he meets along the way. It is in the second half of the book that it falters. A complete change of setting takes away from the story. Also, issues that arise near the end of the first half that should be further addressed are brought up, but they are never then again addressed. Overall, this book is a moving story of a boy trying to figure out how to get through life, but ultimately it does not live up to all it starts out to be. None the less, it deserves to be read.
Ugly World, Beautiful Book Rule of the Bone has been compared to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, but if you're looking for a safe, lovable anti-hero, you've come to the wrong place. Chappie (aka 'Bone') is a tortured adolescent, lost in a place of parental neglect, sexual abuse, violence and self-destruction. With his compelling novel, Russell Banks creates a world of teenage angst, loneliness and drug abuse that's so believable it's scary, and his ear for 'teenage language' is dead on. His challenge in creating such a starkly depressing world is to provide hope to the reader. Banks does so by creating a protagonist that, despite a bevy of flaws, is vulnerable, likable and sympathetic, and in the end realizes that no matter how bad life gets, he's still in charge of his own destiny. Salmon Run
THE BONES RULES! When I first read this book it was an Epiphany, a Revelation on how one acquires a meaning and direction for one's life through one's own experiences. More than that, it was a damn fine coming of age page-turner superior to even Catcher In The Rye. The main characters are fully developed people the reader comes to care about very deeply.
I laughed and I cried as The Bone spoke to my heart with his tale of adolescent angst that is chillingly like my own. A deeply spiritual undertone is present, but not a hokey sort of religiosity. Rather, it's a mature, modern, existential spirituality of creating one's own meaning in a meaningless universe. The ending, when Bone conjurs forth his own constellations in the nightime sky in remembrance of his fallen friends, is breathtaking.
I love this book and I love Russell Banks for such a magical journey deep into the heart of a modern day boy hero, a 21st century Huck Finn.
Read it once and you'll read it again and again.
NJM
Author of I WAS A TEENAGE JEHOVAH'S WITNESS and JEHOVAH UNMASKED.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
