Rating: 
Summary: Allison writes like life.
Review: This book was long, plots and characters came and went, point of view switched around. I adored it for all of those reasons - what a thick, rich, satisfying experience I enjoyed while reading Cavedweller. Dorothy Allison's second novel showcases her greatest strength as a storyteller: she writes the way most of us experience life, a rare talent that modern literature desperately needs.Allison doesn't write for spectators. In order to truly enjoy her work, a reader must be willing to commit to the act of reading, to experience the work as a collaboration between author and reader. Nothing she writes goes down like silk; she is much more deeply textured than that, and infinitely more real.
Rating: 
Summary: Bastard Out of California
Review: Dorothy Allison wisely did not write a sequel to Bastard Out of Carolina. Sequels rarely satisfy. This is a book coming from a different direction and it centers on Cissy, the bastard daughter, more than it centers on her mother. In this sense, this is another "bastard" book. But, unlike Bastard Out of Carolina, this book literally and figuratively comes from a different direction. Mother and daughter do come to terms with each other but before this can happen, a richly varied cast of characters must pass through their lives. Not all these stories are resolved, but then, not all stories in real life can be resolved neatly within the confines of one novel either. It takes a cave and a three-ring crisis to bring Cissy to the point where she grows up and understands her mother. As Cissy drags herself and her two friends through the womb of the cave to stand once more in the light, she realizes that her mother likewise dragged her out of the cave of California to stand in! the light of the American South. It's a connection that had to be made by each woman in her own way. There are flaws in this book but no more so than second novels I've read by other authors. This book is more about real women than the average bodice-ripper novel, or the trash put out by Hollywood. If you take the time to read, Cavedweller is a satisfying book, a well-crafted novel by a good story-teller.
Rating: 
Summary: for a story that goes nowhere, read this one.
Review: I picked up Cavedweller and settled in for a treat. Opening up the book, the first line grabbed me. Unfortunately, the spectacular first line was the best line of the entire book, by far. The characters were thin, poorly researched, and sometimes just plain wrong. The story lines started down paths what were promising, then the paths stopped dead, like in an English hedge maze. Characters appeared and then vanished with nothing connecting them. What were those accents? Didn't California change Delia's? What ever happened to the minister? I want to hear how Cissy reacted to Delia's outpouring of honesty. Why make a point of lesbians, and then drop the subject? I can only conjecture that Allison had several issues to put forth, and then constructed a wandering plausible storyline to connect them. Allison would be an excellent writer of essays, and I would be delighted to read such a work of hers.
Rating: 
Summary: Allison disappoints in excessively-long narrative
Review: I must add my voice to those who were disppointed with this excessively-long novel. Never quite satisfied with exactly what "Cavedweller" intends to accomplish, I found myself thrilled with several chapters and utterly bored with others. English majors will have a field day with the cave symbolism, but readers who were stunned with the power and urgency of "Bastard" will be sorely disappointed. Characters never fully seem developed; plot wanders, and themes are forced, transparent, and, in places, unbelievable.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I avoided reading Bastard Out of Carolina for a long time as I had heard how emotionally intense a book it was. When I finally read it I agreed with what I had heard, and was engrossed and engaged and impressed and touched. I looked forward to Cavedweller, expecting another beautifully written book. But I was disappointed- there were alot of sloppy errors that did not allow me to suspend disbelief (no, it is not 3 am in California when it is midnight in Georgia), characters were explored and then dropped (who was the main character?) and the story meandered with no real point that I could make out. Too bad; I agree with other reviewers that this half-baked work needed more time and an editor.
Rating:
Summary: poorly crafted, poorly realized
Review: I was most bothered by the poor characterizations in Cavedweller. Countless times the characters turned themselves out in the most unlikely ways with no motivation or tension to explain this. I suspect Allison is ill-suited for the omniscient voice. Her incessant narrative mind-reading drove me up a tree--although this artifice was surely necessary to explain the characters' eternally bewildering behaviour. I thought the beginning was quite compelling, however, and it wasn't until I was halfway through the book before by disbelief could be suspended no more. The relatively strong caving sequences leant the second half of the book some cohesion but came too late to save the novel as a whole for this reader. The story takes place in a rural (or suburban? I couldn't tell) Georgia town called "Cayro". I was telling this to a friend and his immediate response was "Like the syrup?" which I found an inscrutably apt perception.
Rating: 
Summary: The start of something wonderful...
Review: I enjoyed this book and the start of some complex characters, however I anticipated stronger development and was rather disappointed in the end. Each character in the book evolved as they searched through their own pain, yet we end up not knowing if their search is fruitful or destructive. Does Amanda explore sin to the degree of hurting herself? Does Dede reconcile her maternal side with her destructive side? Does Cissy finally discover her inner strength in California? So many questions left unanswered that I feel rather cheated to have invested myself in these characters and not know the outcome.I also am disappointed in the blatent typos and mistakes...I will read Ms. Allison's next work but not with as much anticipation as I read this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Needs an Editor
Review: Overall, I enjoyed the writing but the story seemed to meander and I was unclear who the main characters were. The story begins focusing on Delia then Cissy and then introduces a host of other interesting characters without ever giving you a chance to know any of them. Allison presents realistic characters but never gives a purpose for their inclusion in the book. And once she brings in these great characters, she lets them go and you never know what happens to them. What happened to Tacey, her mother, and most of all MT and Stephanie, Delia's long lost friends? She also jumped around a lot - at one point, she finally gets her abandoned children back and they refuse to speak with her. Pages later its years later and they are a family although still dysfunctional. I was left wondering how they got past the initial trials. I was also disappointed to see blatant errors in the book when Cissy is called Cindy and Nadine is called Nolan. A good editor should have caught these errors as well as insisted that the story was tied up before rushing to publish it. I am not sure if I want to read her next book.
Rating:
Summary: Could not put this book down.
Review: She's done it again. Bastard Out of Carolina blew me away and this one is even better. Wow. Ms. Allison weaves an intricate web around all of her characters in such a way that you feel like you are living their lives with them. Maybe as a best friend. Most assuredly from a close view across the road. Her characters are real people, not the glamorous, plastic, facelifted types in so many novels today. They aren't super heros or super women or super anything. They suffer the tuff stuff in life just like the rest of us. They cry, they bleed, they make BIG mistakes and they LOVE each other. This book is as rich as a turtle cheesecake and every bit as good.
Rating:
Summary: OK, OK, I get it
Review: Every friend told me I had to read BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA. I should have started there. Seems some author had to crank out a second novel really fast to catch the wave of her last success. It's been a long time since I've witnessed such muddled narration--most of the time, I couldn't figure out whose point of view saw what, much less who the various pronouns in a paragraph referred to. I gave up, just letting "she" stand for any bitter woman--found it went along just as well that way. I think the novel was forced out--and shows its strain, like the pinched head of a baby from a pair of forceps. That the two lead characters can drive from L. A. to Oklahoma City by sunset on the same day they start out, stoppin' their tired, ol' bones at a flea market or two along the way, was enough, right from the start, to do me in. Wow, they were doin' about 390 miles an hour, by my count--all to get across country and meet up with a bunch of stereotypes they call friends and relatives. But then the moral of the thing fits a life lived in such fast cars and easy destinations: all you coastal, ironic types, there's good news awaitin' fer you--you can become a hick again, ifen you set yourseff to work real hard on it.
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