Rule of the Bone: A Novel

Russell Banks

HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995 - Fiction - 390 pages

Chappie, the precociously wise narrator of Rule of the Bone, is a punked-out teenager living in an upstate New York trailer park with his mother and abusive stepfather. Almost accidentally he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he drifts through crash pads, doper squats, and malls. With his best friend, Russ, he gets a crossed-bone tattoo on his arm and takes the name "Bone", inventing and claiming for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider.

Contents

• Just Dont Touch Anything: 1
• All Is Forgiven: 16
• Canadians: 24

About the author

The oldest of four children, Russell Banks spent his childhood and adolescence in New Hampshire and Eastern Massachusetts. His blue-collar, working-class background is strongly reflected in his writing. The first in his family to attend college, Banks studied at Colgate University and later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill. While he was establishing himself as a writer, Banks spent time as a plumber, shoe salesman, and a window dresser. He wrote 21 books of fiction and nonfiction. Banks's titles include Searching for Survivors, Family Life, Hamilton Stark, The New World, The Book of Jamaica, Trailerpark, The Relation of My Imprisonment, Continental Drift, Success Stories, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter and Dreaming Up America. Banks has also written numerous poems, stories, and essays. His last novel was The Magic Kingdom was published in November 2022. Banks is the recipient of several awards and prizes. Among his accolades are the St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, the John Dos Passos Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1986, Continental Drift was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Russell Banks died on January 7, 2023, at his home in upstate New York. He was 82.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Rule of the Bone: A Novel
• Author: Russell Banks
• Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 4, 2008
• ISBN: 0060172754, 9780060172756
• Length: 390 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary