Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks

Rule of the Bone

By Russell Banks

  • Release Date: 2011-09-27
  • Genre: Fiction & Literature
4.5 Score: 4.5 (From 55 Ratings)

Book Synopsis

In the tradition Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, Russell Banks’s quintessential novel of a disaffected homeless youth living on the edge of society “redefines the young modern anti-hero. . . . Rule of the Bone has its own culture and language, and Bone is sure to become a beloved character for generations” (San Francisco Chronicle).

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 school bus 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.

With a compelling, off-beat protagonist evocative of Holden Caulfield and Quentin Coldwater, and a narrative voice that masterfully and naturally captures the nuances of a modern vernacular, Banks’s haunting and powerful novel is an indisputable—and unforgettable—modern classic.

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Latest Impressions

  • Rules!

    5
    By New Jose
    This book is hard to put down, my second time reading it was more enjoyable than the first time! I hope it is adapted into a film as rumored.
  • Rule of the Bone

    5
    By Sproutie1
    What an awesome book!!! I would recommend this read to anyone and everyone! I was able to actually visualize Bone on his many different adventures, feeling so very sorry for him at first and then being happy for him as he becomes a man. Nicely done!!!