Book Review #1 "RULE OF THE BONE"

[On a scale of 1 through 10 with 10 being reserved for eternal classics and 1 for books the world would be better off without "Rule of the Bone" earns a 6.5. Note that this is a ranking by an extremely picky and relatively conservative reader meaning that 80% of the time I'd rather read a confirmed classic than what may turn out to be a passing fad.]

"Rule of the Bone" is the first novel I've read by Russel Banks. No one recommended it to me and I had neither heard of it nor read any reviews before picking it up. My previous direct exposure to Banks' work consisted of a handful of short stories all of which were good and none of which were unusually good; furthermore I had seen the film versions of his novels "Affliction" and "The Sweet Hereafter." I read this novel for two simple reasons: one, I had the good luck of acquiring a nearly-new copy of the book for a quarter from a public library and, second, I had a certain kindly inclination towards Banks' work due to the avowedly superficial reason that I had met and briefly conversed with him following a reading he gave at the Philadelphia Public Library. During our brief exchange I informed Banks that I had started writing a novel. He wished me luck and informed me that it's common for writers to go through a long period of rejection, that he had submitted his work for 10 years before anyone agreed to publish it and that he knew of other writers who went through a similar decade-long trial by rejection. Ok, enough autobiographical throat-clearing, on to the review.

Banks' novel is the story of one year (roughly) in the turbulent life of "Bone" a white-American teenager (he's 14 when the book opens) from a lower-middle-class family who leaves home and supports himself by dealing marijuana because his weak-willed mother refuses to separate from his stepfather who had sexually abused him. The novel, which takes place partly in upstate New York and partly in Jamaica, is told in the protagonist's voice in an admirable rendition (by the white-haired, 60-something-year-old author) of a sociologically-accurate 1990s-Northeast-Coast teen vernacular. "Rule of the Bone" is an engaging, fast-paced and relatively quick read (even for a tortoisely-slow reader such as myself). It is not, however, what I call a "fast food novel" due, primarily, to its moral complexity. Here's a summary of the plot: Chappie (who later adopts the nickname "Bone") leaves home and starts living with a motorcycle gang as their marijuana supplier, later, he leaves the gang and leads a homeless life during which three major events occur: first, he meets a Rastafarian from Jamaica named I-Man a marijuana-dealing illegal alien who becomes Bone's spiritual mentor of sorts; second, Bone rescues a young girl from a pedophile and sends her back to her drug-addicted mother; third, Bone moves with I-Man to Jamaica where a series of marijuana-smoke-enveloped adventures unfold.

The main strenghts of the novel are the believability of the protagonist's voice and the way in which he grapples with moral dilemmas; its main weaknesses are a series of pivotal, hard-to-believe coincidences (that are, unfortunately, an integral part of the novel's narrative structure) and a contrived, overly-neat ending.

Before I wrap up I'd like to note that this book is self-consciously within the American literary tradition of first-person vernacular narratives by male youth which Twain begun with "Huckleberry Finn" and Salinger successfully continued in the 20th century with "Catcher In The Rye." [Note the rather obvious way in which Banks' first sentence echoes the opening sentence of Twain's classic.] A comparison of this novel with its predecessors would not, however, help you decide whether or not to read Banks' novel. All I'll say in this regard is that although such comparisons are inevitable and called-for, I'll refrain from making them and instead predict that those of you who like or love "Catcher In The Rye" and/or Huck Finn will likely enjoy this book, as I did, but probably won't end up loving it.
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