Rattlebone - Softcover

Maxine Clair

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860490441 ISBN 13: 9781860490446

Publisher: Virago, 1996

Synopsis

Reenie and Wanda, two friends, come of age during the Korean War. In their close community of Rattlebone, they grapple with family problems. Reenie witnesses the gradual estrangement between her parents, Wanda worries for her adored brother, and they both encounter love in awkward guises.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Each of these related stories contains insight and intensity on its own; as a group they successfully create the African- American 1950s Kansas City (Kans.) community of the title as an insular world replete with detail and texture. In her fictional debut, Clair (Coping with Gravity, not reviewed) works from the outside in to show her characters, beginning with the way others see them and ending with their visions of themselves. Irene Wilson is the linchpin who connects them to one another, and the narrator of several stories. In ``October Brown,'' she observes her parents' marital problems and watches as her new teacher moves in on her father. ``Cherry Bomb'' has Irene recounting her early, awkward stabs at sexual contact with her cousin's friend Nick and the jottings she made in a diary, as well as her friend Wanda's revelation that she has gotten her first period. ``A Most Serene Girl'' follows Irene as she makes friends with Geraldine and visits her family's basement apartment in a ``tourist home''--which, Geraldine informs her, means that people can rent rooms there to have sex, and she and Geraldine establish an afternoon routine of peeking through keyholes. ``Secret Love'' explains why Irene's friend Wanda abruptly stops allowing Irene to read her own diary after her retarded brother Puddin'--who likes to eat mayonnaise out of a jar with his hand--is taken away. Other characters have their say as well. In ``The Roomers,'' the owner of a boardinghouse who has never been able to have children tells of asking unmarried schoolteacher October Brown to leave because of her pregnancy and chasing her husband away in the process. ``The Great War'' explores Irene's mother Pearlean's feelings about her husband as she sits on the front porch. Even greater than the sum of its admirable parts. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Clair's debut, a collection of 11 short stories, centers around the coming-of-age of a young African American girl growing up on the outskirs of 1950s Kansas City.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1860490441
• ISBN 13: 9781860490446
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 214