Rating: 
Summary: The Bone Rules
Review: Fabulous. Believe the hype. You will certainly believe every word out of Bone's mouth. Scorched earth storytelling, totally vivid, compassionate, thrilling, provocative. I, too, picked up Cloudsplitter after this book and I, too, gained more appreciation for Bone. Bone tackles the question of race in America more subtly and more quickly. Funny, heartbreaking, scary, sweet.
Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: One reviewer compares it to the Catcher in the Rye, which is high (and well deserved) praise indeed. One of those books I wish I could read it again for the first time...
Rating:
Summary: touches kids' hearts
Review: I read this book with a class of remedial English students. They hated school, hated reading, hated books-- many had never read a whole one. From day one, after one student commented, "I didn't know they wrote books about people like me..." these "bad kids" were rapt with attention EVERY DAY in class until we were done. I wouldn't have believed one book could captivate so many minds, but it did. (It certainly captivated mine). Chappie IS high school students today, whether we want to admit it or not. Banks has tackled and been triumphant at a feat that, in my experience, only S.E. Hinton has achieved before-- writing a book in which REAL kids see themselves.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended!
Review: Chappie's life is perhaps very typical of many today. He comes into the story having been abused by a stepfather, and anbandoned by family and the school system. Everyone gave up on Chappie. The book revolves around his friendships and interactions with others, and the meaning he draws from his experiences. A touching book that reveals the both the isolation and unity of an individual life.
Rating:
Summary: Rule of the Bone
Review: Rule of the Bone is Awesome!discoduck
Rating:
Summary: A GREAT COMING OF AGE NOVEL
Review: I teach high school English, mostly American lit, and without having read this book myself I recommended it to one of my sophomore students for a free-reading unit we were doing. He read it in three days and loved it. I quickly finished the book I had chosen (A STAR CALLED HENRY) and picked up his copy of RULE. I had never read Banks, except for a few short stories here and there, but now I am a complete convert (so much so, in fact, that I'm reading CLOUDSPLITTER now, which makes RULE seem like an even better book than i first thought). i noticed that one reviewer wrote that Banks had gotten the voice of the narrator all wrong. That reader apparently does not spend the majority of his waking hours with teenagers. I do. And let me say that the narration is dead on in every respect. So often critics claim to have discovered the next CATCHER IN THE RYE or the heir to HUCKLEBERRY FINN and never before have I agreed until now. RULE OF THE BONE is a beautiful novel with something real at stake, perhaps something more real than Holden Caufield's three-day ramble (and certainly more engaging). Bone's journey to himself (his "I-self") is visceral and funny and sad and moving. I plan to teach it next year in my modern novel course.
Rating: 
Summary: Russell Banks does coming of age...3.5stars
Review: This was my first full length Banks I've read. I decided to read this novel first because I'd heard many good things about it. So I placed aside my plans to read any of Banks other work until after I finished Rule of the Bone. Overall I was pretty impressed with Rule... It was a very intriguing and entertaining if not always completely beleivable read. I really liked Bone as a character. Banks really did a good job at placing me (the reader) in the mind of Bone. He really has a good understanding of how teenagers talk, act and think, although I thinkn the mohawk may have been overkill. I appreciated his spunk and tenacity, and although he wasn't always the most likable character I really began to sympathize and root for him. Rule... folllows Bone (Chappie Chapman) along on his escapades as he is kicked out of his home, where he live with his alcholic mother and abusive stepfather as he wanders from upstate new york and eventually finds his way to Jamaica. For the most part I enjoyed rule... I enjoyed the characters and banks style for writing this Novel. It's written almost like a confesional. I mentioned how bans really seemed to really have a handle on characters especially teenage ones. He also has a good understanding of the jamaican culture. He has another book set in jamaica called the book of jamaica. Unfortunately Rule... wasn't always believable once the story shifted locales to jamaica. While i enjoyed bones observations and advertures while in jamaica everything didn't always come up plausable. But hey this is fiction... I still give this book 3.5 stars. Banks prose is very readable and while it isn't a page turner. It's definetely interesting read. It reads like a modern day version of the catcher in the rye. Nothing earth shattering happens but it still quite journey into mind of a young teen.
Rating: 
Summary: overrated, not believable
Review: Russell Banks should stick to fiction with adult characters. His attempt to sound like a 14-year-old boy is a spectacular failure. Banks, like most authors writing teenage characters, chooses to ape teen dialect by running on sentences and piling on slang. The effect is reminsicent of a high school principal trying to appear hep to students, or more accurately, a 60-year-old praise-fed writer living in Ireland and "researching" a "Huck Finn/Catcher in the Rye update" (rip-off) by paying overseas subscription rates to Tigerbeat magazine. No two good books have had such a negative effect on modern fiction as Huck Finn and Catcher in the Rye. Almost every book written about a teen protagonist in the last thirty, forty years lazily takes its cues from them and waters things down. The main character in Banks' book is of course a misunderstood youth, an outcast, a wanderer whose name might as well be Huck Caulfield. Banks' unique contribution to the teen-book archetype is a different name (Chappie) and, instead of a straw hat or a duckbill cap, a mowhawk and a nose ring. Other than that you got yourself a book that could have been spit out by a computer that was programmed to combine the two aforementioned classics and give them a more modern setting. Chappie's home life is the stuff of afterschool special factory belts. Mom is divorced, Dad is out of the picture, new stepdad is an ogre. The plot ridiculously plops him in the company of "bikers" (is Banks' real last name "Meyers?")and hilariously takes him to Jamaica. There is not an ounce of realism to the story. Banks might as well have taken Chappie to Oz via a magic broom. The book panders to kids Chappie's age with three-page sentences full of MTV-isms, as if no teenager could speak (or comprehend) simple, direct sentences not informed by pop culture. And, in typical entertainment industry fashion, it chooses to portray children only if they come from cartoonishly broken homes, as if kids with stepdads leaving rifles lying around are the only kind who experience conflict worth sharing through story. The universal praise for this book is startling and typical and says more about sheep falling at the feet of a fat writer king than anything that happens inside these not believable pages. Hopefully someday readers will be treated to a teen story that speaks to kids who live within the cartoon margins of Jamaican jet setters and no-shoe-having river-raft riders. The publishing industry doesn't seem to know that they exist.
Rating:
Summary: Bone Rules
Review: In upstate New York, a young, stoned, high school drop out begins his new life. With no money, no place to stay and only one friend in the whole world, Chappie sets off into the world. Having no direction he's just looking for open doors and opportunities. Although slow, these opportunities and open doors do arrive. With the help of a Rastafarian guardian angel, who helps him find the way. Chappie learns about life, love, family and friends the hard way but with many memories and experiences that will be with him for the rest of his life. Rule Of The Bone by Russell Banks is a page-turner. With out hesitation this book gets a 10 in my opinion. Once you start you will not want to put it down. There is no warm up chapter; you're addicted from the first page. The teenage vernacular was crafted to perfection, making it easy to read. Especially the vocabulary. The story is complex. It invokes all new ideas, thoughts, and feelings into your head. You might have a very difficult time reading this book if you can't relate to teenage behavior or can't deal with it. Critical and judgmental people might also have a hard time with it because of the unconventional journey of the lead character. This book can easily be called a modern day Catcher In The Rye. It's bound to be a classic I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story about life and for people who are trying to figure out who they are inside. This book gives you a perfect look at how one boy finds himself. Rule Of The Bone is fun for all ages from adolescents to people with Alzheimer's as long as they have an open mind. " It's weird but as long as I didn't look at her and watched the guy with her instead, her uncle or whatever, I didn't flip out, all I was into was bumming a smoke from the guy. But the second I switched over to the kid it's like something terrible is about to happen, this huge tyrannosaurus rex or the country of Canada on the map is hovering over the entire United States and is about to fall or break apart and avalanche down on me and cut off my breath, ..." I chose this excerpt because it is a perfect illustration of Banks' tone and use of language. As you can see there are no big words you don't know the meaning of and there are not any complicated sentences. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The sentences sound as though an actual teen was talking to you and the sentences have no structure. They are all "run on" sentences. Its not like a narrator is telling you a story, its like your 15 year old next door neighbor is telling you about his inside world. I consider this a definite must read for all.
Rating: 
Summary: watchout
Review: The main character in Rule of the Bone is a confused boy, Chappie, who falls into many of the cracks in society's sidewalk including theft, illicit drugs, and not understanding his peaceful self. Chappie is a white kid with a Mohawk who sticks himself out but doesn't really want to be noticed. After the muscle-bound biker leader sacrifices his life to rescue Chappie from a fire, Chappie takes on a new identity - Bone. Bone decides to go with the flow. From I-Man Bone learns some true and scary issues about people, nature and doing what you feel is right. Rule of the Bone is an eye-opener for the common American who follows tradition. I believe this book helps determine the identity of your true self as if you were born in a different land than the United Stated and raised as I-Self.
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