Rating: 
Summary: a great book... worth the read
Review: I'm going to keep this short, because i'm sure the other 32 current reviews do a great job of comparing to catcher in the rye and such. This book was recommended to me by my english teacher when I first finished catcher, and wanted more. It's definitely a great book, but as someone growing up in the era definied, I found it somewhat cliche at parts. I figure enough years have passed that most people picking it up now wouldn't recognize the cliches, and would enjoy the book for it's great adventure story.
Rating:
Summary: An honest review
Review: There is something very beautiful and intriguing about a twisted life like Bone's, from Russell Banks's novel Rule of the Bone. Banks builds his character on honesty and impulse, sending readers on a turbulent journey of a troubled teenage mind, starting with a sincere, Catcher in the Rye style opening vowing everything told is true.
Rule of the Bone is narrated through Banks's main character Bone, who like Holden Caulfield, uses slang and colloquial language to compliment his image. Banks does a wonderful job of writing his book to seem as if it were coming out of the characters mind itself, using run-on sentences to represent jumbled thoughts, a vocabulary that seems appropriate for its speakers, slurred words and repetitions, and above all, an innocent truthfulness. This syntax of Banks's is similar to J.D. Salinger's, and becomes evident on the first page.
"You'll probably think I'm making a lot of this up just to make me sound better than I really am or smarter or even luckier but I'm not. Besides, a lot of the things that've happened top me in my life so far which I'll get to pretty soon'll make me sound evil or just plain dumb or the tragic victim of circumstances. Which I know doesn't exactly prove I'm telling the truth but if I wanted to make myself look better than I am or smarter or the master of my own fate so to speak I could. The fact is the truth is more interesting than anything I could make up and that's why I'm telling it in the first place."
This is the first taste of Bone that Banks feeds us, drawing us in with the mystery of the "the truth." What struck me most about this opening was how personal it is- a great method to draw readers into the book by making them feel closer with the characters.
Though the openings may be similar, this story is not a reproduction of The Catcher in the Rye. Banks introduces his own idiosyncratic characters along with scandalous scenarios creating a wild, modern flavor. Readers are easily seduced as Bone honestly recounts a time in his life when he was nothing but an immature punk trying to build an image. We are given this fourteen year old boy whose family life is shattered and seeks euphoria in pot smoking and low key mischief. He finds comfort in nothing, he commits several criminal acts, and he follows all the wrong leaders. By and large, Bone is an offbeat, lost teenager with a shattered life who subconsciously embarks on a mission to find himself.
"Basically people don't know how kids think, I guess they forget. But when you're a kid it's like you're wearing this binoculars strapped to your eyes and you cant see anything except what's in the dead center of the lenses because you're too scared of everything else or else you don't understand it and people expect you to, so you feel stupid all the time. Mostly a lot of stuff just doesn't get registered. You're always f***ing up and there's a lot that you don't even see that people expect you to see..."
Something that remains constant about Bone's character is that he is always worried about doing what is expected. For example, there is a period in the beginning of his escape when he lives with the gang of bikers and a sixteen year old high school dropout. During this time, they expect him only to keep the marijuana on a steady flow.
Bone reaches a higher level of maturity towards the middle of the book when he meets I-Man, a homeless Jamaican Rasta with whom Bone ends up living for a few months. During his stay with I-Man, Bone learns more about himself than he knew possible, and gains a certain level of wisdom and knowledge. We begin to see that Bone actually digs deeply into everything he thinks about, though he appears to just be a punk rock kid without thought or direction. At this point, Bone begins to set a really curious tone in the story with all the new perception and maturity that begins to flood his life. This tone took me by surprise because Bone usually does not let many people intrigue him. However, when he meets I-Man, he becomes extremely curious and fascinated by everything that I-Man has to offer. For example, when it seems like his adventures with I-Man may be coming to an end, Bone says "...I wasn't actually thinking too much about my future just then, it was too scary and lonely to contemplate any possible futures without the company and teaching of I-Man to guide me..." From this the reader can gather that I-Man has taught Bone about life, something that he never knew about, therefore sparking this curiosity in his mind to always be around I-Man and learn more. He gives Bone confidence and courage- something that is not present within him at the beginning of the story.
The plot only picks up as the story still progresses. Towards the end, Bone actually ends up becoming Rastafarian and living in Jamaica, which adds to the voyage through his mind by introducing new characters and untamable situations. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a creative attention-grabbing novel. I have little criticism for Banks- only praise for his style, his plot, and his chaotic entertaining characters. This is a book you should not miss.
Rating: 
Summary: RotB Review
Review: Rule of the Bone Review
The novel, Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks is a hard hitting book, which captures the reader's attention, by portraying the turbulence of adolescence. Its main character Chappie, (Bone) is today's version of Holden Caulfield. His tormented life and struggle to adulthood provides a story for young adults to relate to, similar to Catcher in the Rye.
This book takes place in the struggling working class neighborhood of Plattsburg, NY during the mid 1990's. In the beginning many of the characters wrestle with a hard economic life, making enough money for rent is the priority. Chappie is a young man who steals to survive in this harsh world. The book covers many clashes between him and his family, the law, and especially his stepfather. The tough realistic setting adds to the power of this book.
Chappie's mom and stepfather see him as a disease. His anger is too hard for them to handle. Russell Banks slowly introduces the thoughts behind this anger, which Chappie is trying to avoid. In time his anger reaches a point where he has to leave his house and try and find another place to live. This move allows him to learn something about himself. Chappie starts a life of crime before he leaves home; after that, his crimes get more intense. He wants to change his ways, but he doesn't know how. New friendships cause him to become even more of a criminal. This shows how peer pressure is so influential in an adolescent life. When he changes his name from Chappie to Bone he leaves behind the past and looks towards the future. Banks uses the symbol of Chappie's tattoo to describe the turning point in his life.
Chappie has been trying to find his father for a long time, which has been a challenge. When he goes to Jamaica, he finds someone who looks like him. "I know him. I know his face, way down deep inside me, like in my chest I know him. And for the first time I understood why I'd decided to follow I-Man to Jamaica. I knew he'd be here. It's my father! My real father! My mouth flopped open and I couldn't say anything but in my mind I'm like calling him in this little boy's voice, Daddy! Daddy! Over here, it's me, your son Chappie!" Because Chappie left his home in upstate New York, because he met I-Man, he found his father when in Jamaica with I-Man. This was one of his greatest achievements, finding his father, which changed everything.
The themes of this book rebellion, friendship, and independence represent the adolescent life. At first rebellion is the most dominant idea. Once Chappie meets Russ, friendship expands and becomes the most controlling idea. The most significant friend is I-Man, the one he meets later because this one doesn't abandon him, like the rest of them do. Through the development of this friendship, Banks is able to introduce the ideas of trust and confidence. Only when Bone experienced trust and confidence was he able to move on.
Banks uses dialogue that captures tough vocabulary of the way people talk in today's world. An example of this dialogue is when I-Man and Evening Star (Bones dad's girlfriend) are in Jamaica and Evening Star says "Greetings, Rasta! Respect, mon. Evert'ing irie, mon?" (280) After awhile I-Man said, "De bwoy him be Baby Doc, an' him lookin' fe him fodder Papa, Doc." (280) Banks uses dialogue that real Jamaicans use, so it seemed much realer, as if you were there. If he didn't use this kind of dialogue, it wouldn't have had as much of an impact on me.
Rule of the Bone doesn't hold anything back.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, painful, and funny too
Review: Chappie, the 14-year-old narrator of this powerful novel, is a Huckleberry Finn for the 1990s, with a mohawk haircut and a nose ring."Anyhow my life got interesting you might say the summer I turned fourteen and was heavy into weed but I didn't have any money to buy it with so I started looking around the house all the time for things I could sell but there wasn't much." The house is a trailer in Au Sable, New York, that he's lived in all his life "so I knew the place like I knew the inside of my mouth." But somehow he's overlooked an amazing stash in the closet ' a gun and half a dozen plastic bags full of old coins. His mother and stepfather are both alcoholics, his father abandoned him when he was 5 and his stepfather sexually abused him, which Chappie has never told his mother. Chappie is deeply into anger and rebellion and has no sense of self-worth. When the thefts are discovered, Chappie slams out of the house. Homeless, Chappie begins dealing weed to keep his spot on the couch in his friend Russ' squalid apartment, which Russ shares with a revolving group of thuggish bikers. He drifts, getting high and hanging out at the mall until the bikers begin boosting stereo equipment. Russ wants in but Chappie wants no part of it. "For them [adults] I guess what was right was what you could get away with and what was wrong was what you couldn't, but it made me feel stupid that I didn't know it too. It was like the difference between dealing small-load weed and dealing crank ' there was one, I knew but I didn't know what it was. The whole thing was scary." Chappie determines not "to be any worse a criminal than I already was" but the whole thing ends in conflagration, leaving him not only homeless but presumed dead. Like Huck, he takes advantage of this, thinking to start a new life, grows out his hair, gets a crossed-bones tattoo and sheds his old name, calling himself "Bone." He and Russ, after an interlude with a couple of crackheads in the bus that crashed in The Sweet Hereafter, hide out in a summer house for a while until the place is trashed and Russ decides to return to real life. Bone strikes out on his own. He's picked up by a pedophile who appeared earlier in the novel and manages to abscond with the pedophile's cash and his little girl captive, Froggy. Bone returns to the bus which is now sweet-smelling and occupied by the book's Jim character, a run-away migrant worker from Jamaica, a pot-steeped Rastafarian who calls himself I-Man. Awed by I-Man's evident wisdom and peaceful sense of himself, Bone clings to him as friend and father figure, absorbing as much Rastafarian mysticism as he can. Eventually he travels to Jamaica with I-Man, after returning Froggy to the crackhead mother who sold her and trying one last time to reconcile with his own mother. Banks is clearly familiar with the Jamaica the tourists don't see. Bone, meeting up with his real father, lives on the edge between the rich white residents and the black Jamaicans who score off them as best they can. Here is a world as brutal and unforgiving as the one Bone left behind and alien too. But Bone sees opportunity. He eyes the white tourists "who I figured would be relieved to buy some ganja from a white kid who spoke regular English instead of having to deal with a scary black Jamaican like I-Man....and then I wondered if I-Man'd already figured that out long ago..." His view of I-Man is being revised. If the story sounds bleak, well, it is, and Bone's reunion with his "Pa" doesn't turn out so well either, but Bone's deadpan voice is so full of life and humor and pluck that the reader is swept up in his harrowing adventures and comes to believe in the insights he works out for himself. Banks deals unflinchingly with the seamy underworld of runaways where adults are predators and goes far more deeply into issues of race than would ever have occurred to Twain. Bone, after working hard at becoming a Rastafarian, cuts off his dreadlocks and embraces his white American identity in a spirit of guilt. "I knew if I wasn't white, if I'd been a real Rasta-boy like I'd been pretending to be I'd be dead now." Banks' vernacular voice never flags or falters. Bone is a real boy, petulant, bratty and impulsive, also brave and loyal. But mostly he is confused; struggling to find his place in the world and something or someone to believe in. Rule of the Bone is a book readers will devour with laughter, pain and hope.
Rating:
Summary: Surprise!! A great book!! Unforgetable
Review: So many reviews have already been posted, so I dont want to repeat what has already been said or re-hash the plot. This book, which I only recently found, is soooo good that it should be a recommended book and should be a classic. Maybe the language and some of the plot will keep it from becoming so, and that would be a shame. But please, dont be put off by the earthy language or some of the descriptions, read it , you wont be sorry. Its a beautiful evocation of lonliness and how lessons can be learned from hard knocks in life. The ending is positive and uplifting and the reader cares about the fate of the hero and the book does not disappoint in this regard. He is going to make it in life because he sees clearly where he needs to go and the kind of people he needs to avoid, and he learned this from all the bad things that have befallen him in his short life. A GREAT read!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: a hunger for truth and hope
Review: This is truly one of the best coming-of-age novels ever published. Read it! You'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read book by all teenagers!
Review: The wonderful Novel Rule of the Bone by author Russell Banks, a coming of age book that is written in the perspective of a life like young teenager named Chappie trying to find his place in life. His character shows the desperation of seeking to find a parental figure which loves him. The upbringing of Chappie is not a nice one, which his stepfather sexually abuses without Chappie's mothers' knowledge. Chappie grows up trying to find his identify, by experimenting with drugs, and surrounding himself with the wrong people. Through his trials and tribulations he succeeds in finding his inner self. He first changes his identity from Chappie to 'hardcore' Bone to change his reputation. Rule of the Bone will either have the reader walk away loving the book, or either disgusted and disliking it. It shows a clear perspective of the character, the occurring events show comprehensible mental images." I didn't think of it until we actually got there but me and Rose must've looked a little weird that morning at the Tailways station, Rose in her little Orphan Annie dress and Expos cap and me in one of I- man's trademark come back to Jamaica tee shirts and the baggy cutoffs I'd made from Mr. Ridgeways lime green plants with the red anchors on them and both of us walking on I- mans fantastic homemade tire sandals." Another positive aspect of the book is its language will mostly like appeal to the average teenager. On the other hand the foul language could have the reversing effect. Throughout the book the explicit language and sometimes disturbing events may turn some readers off. I personally loved this book, being able to relate in the conflict of trying to find out who you are is an issue each and every person in life; has once faced. Rule of the Bone is such a realistic book; it shows the negative side of life not many people like to discuss. Its honesty gives the reader a connection with the character. The many adventures he has makes this book a cliff hanger, which you simply cant put down. The setting are all over the place, from a broken down bus which they call home; to the appealing environment of a beach in Jamaica .This book appeals to most teenagers, those who can enjoy a dark to light novel with a sense of a different type of humor and non-fictional theme. "I learned about myself and life from coming to love them out there at the school bus in Plattsburgh and being with I-man afterwards at the ant farm an dup on the groundation in Accompong. They were the only people I'd chosen on my own to love, and they were gone. But still, that morning in Mobay when I say Russ or the last time, I saw clearly for the first time that loving Sister Rose and I-man and even Bruce had left me with riches that I could draw on for the rest of my life, and I was totally grateful to them." (Pg. 384, 3rd paragraph ).
Rating:
Summary: A Catcher In The Rye For Modern Times
Review: I won't bother to get into plot details since all the other reviewers already have. I'll just say that every summer, when that first unbearably hot day hits, I take this book out to a nice shade tree and read it from beginning to end. While the beginning is a difficult read (emotionally speaking), stick with it and you will be sun-splashed. Truly a magnificent novel.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Insightful Novel
Review: Russel Banks did an amazing job writing "Rule of the Bone", ecspecially from the view of a teenager. You become engaged in the reading before the end of the first page. There is a bluntness to his writing that makes you wonder how an older man wrote such a story from a kids point of view. "Rule of the Bone" has many great lessons for people of all ages and backgrounds to learn from. The only problem is that most teenagers would not really be able to do all of the things that Chappie a.k.a Bone did. The chances of him getting to another country without a passport, finding his real father, surviving the wrath of drug lords, and then gettin back to the United States, or working aboard a ship, are very unrealistic. The book is still great though. It is very interesting to read. I would mainly reccomend it to young adults and teenagers. Parents may also get Bank's message if they read it which is that societys main unrecognized failure of our time is the failure to save its children. Russel Banks did a great job with the descriptions of where Bone was and what was going on around him.
Rating:
Summary: RULE OF THE BONE
Review: The book Rule of the Bone, by Russell Banks, is a fantastic book that will engulf you right from the very first sentence. It is a rather easy read with few big words and even fewer complex sentences. I can relate especially well to the events and adventures that take place in this book due to the fact that it is written in the perspective of a teenager.
This book portrays the journey of a young boy through his adolescent life. His name is Chappie Dorset, or Bone as you get further into the book, and is fourteen years old. He has been kicked out of his house and has found a new home with his friend Russ and a group of bikers in a small apartment above a video store. He is a heavy smoker and starts to sell skunk, or weed, on the side for extra cash. From that point on Chappie encounters a life of many twists and turns.
This book gives off such a strong feeling of reality that it often seems that you are there with Chappie living through everything he is. I recommend this book to people of all ages and if u don't like to read....well, you'll love to read after this. I didn't like reading all that much but then I stumbled upon a great book and ever since I have loved reading.
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