Bastard out of Carolina (1992) by Dorothy Allison

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

by Dorothy Allison

Greenville, South Carolina

South Carolina:  13/16

    Bastard Out of Carolina had me searching for the "Trauma Porn" wikipedia page (which they have titled "Misery Lit" to see if this would have been one of the first books in that genre and sure enough, the Wikipedia page lists Wild Swans (1992) and Angela's Ashes (1996) as "seminal works establishing the genre."  I think there is a good case to add this book to that list. In more old fasthioned terminology it's a bildungsroman about the miserable childhood of the author who was raised by her mother and abusive (physical, mental and yes, sexual) step father in shit town South Carolina (AKA Greenville).  Bastard Out of Carolina still has a capacity to shock over thirty years later- particularly the scenes where the protagonist pleasures herself to the thought of her (physical) abuse at the hands of her stepfather.  

   When things escalate to full blown rape later in the book, she does not take delight in the experience.  Besides exploring that extremely, extremely forbidden link between childhood sexual abuse and precocious sexuality,  Bastard Out of Carolina is also notable/ahead of its time in the way it depicts a mother who ultimately choses her partner over her child.  That continues to be a fraught subject, as the recent turmoil surrounding Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro, demonstrates.