Bastard out of Carolina

“Nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken.
Nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb
Nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting--
waiting for the miracle to come.” --Leonard Cohen


I had received far too many recommendations from people I respected to be surprised by how good Dorothy Allison’s “Bastard out of Carolina” was. But, there I was, at the end of the book, a little woozy, a little uncertain of the ground beneath me. The first couple of chapters were solid, exactly what I was expecting. One of the rah-rah quotes at the beginning was from one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, who I consider to be one hell of a writer. There’s a certain down-home Southern-fried emphasis on familial relations coursing through the veins of her books, and I expected the same from Allison. In fact, over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed quite a few well-written family tragedies, such as Jane Smiley’s “A Thousand Acres,” Mary McGarry Morris’ “Songs in Ordinary Time,” and Jane Hamilton’s “A Map of the World.” All of them entertaining, but none of them as raw and uncompromising as “Bastard out of Carolina.” “Bastard” is the real deal, an authentic tale of love—wanting it, needing it, and making do without it.

On the surface, Allison’s narrative is about an adolescent girl, Bone, who attempts to survive the dark rage of her new stepfather, Daddy Glen, who’s jealous assaults put her in a physical and emotional hell. Allison’s descriptions of abuse are brutal… I went from compulsively flipping through pages, desperate to get to the next sentence, the next word… to reaching the next paragraph in horror and having to put the book down to take a breath before continuing. It’s rare when a book can stop me in my tracks like that—to get me that emotionally keyed into the character. When Allison is done with you, you taste the mixture of blood and dirt in your mouth and you feel the utter soul-aching sense of loss. Feeling is empathy, and empathy is a key component of relevant storytelling. It's what Allison does, and does well.

The sense of loss drives the book. Bone longs for a sense of love from her Mother that her Mother Anney can never give. Daddy Glen’s an empty, soulless shell whose desperate need for love destroys what it cannot have. Anney looks for connection in the eyes of Glen. This empty circle is a bitter, but useful lesson in the dangers of wanting what you cannot have, despite the perceived injustice of it all. An open hunger for love becomes possessiveness to the point where it is no longer about seeking possession--it possesses you. Sometimes love is not returned. Or maybe it is as I once heard it described: “One loves, the other condescends to being loved.”

And yet, Allison’s book is about survival. If these feelings are universal (and if you disagree, lucky you, you dodged a bullet somewhere in life and may your luck never run out), then the lesson seems to be, generate your own love. I do not feel that it is accidental that Aunt Raylene, the character who seems the most centered and well-adjusted is a character that has removed herself from the desperate pull that other human beings have on each other. She is not a hermit; she has family. It's not about isolation. But her own spirit is self-sustaining. In her past she has had to give up a lover. It has made her stronger. Maybe that is the lesson… you have to give up the need for love to cultivate your own. Allison’s words are tough and unsparing. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything. And yet, their transformative power gives the reader something that only the best and rarest literature can give: a glimpse of hope.

Because in the end, there is no miracle. In the end, we are the miracle.