she loves her and will forgive her if she decides to go back to Glen, reiterating that she will not return to the house with Glen. Her mother then vows not to go back to Glen unless Bone comes with her. When Glen discovers this, he attacks Bone at her Aunt Alma's house, breaking her arm and raping her on the kitchen floor. Anney walks in on him and fights him off. Glen follows the two out to the car, begging Anney to kill him rather than abandon him. To Bone's disgust and amazement, Anney ends up crying and throwing her arms around Glen. Bone's aunt Raylene visits her at the hospital and takes custody of Bone, as Anney has disappeared. While Bone is recuperating at her aunt's house, Anney shows up with a new birth certificate for Bone, this time without the word "illegitimate" stamped on the bottom. She asks Bone's forgiveness and leaves without telling her where she is going. Reviews In the July 5, 1992, edition of The New York Times Book Review, George Garrett said the book "in no way seems to be a patchwork of short stories linked together. Everything, each part, belongs only to the novel" and "close to flawless". He compared it to J.D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, writing, "Special qualities of her style include a perfect ear for speech and its natural rhythms; an unassertive, cumulative lyricism; an intensely imagined and presented sensory world, with all five senses working together; and, above all, again and again a language for the direct articulation of deep and complex feelings." K. K. Roeder in the April 1991 publication of San Francisco Review of Books states that Allison: "relates the difficulty of Bone's struggles with intensity, humor, and hard-wrought rejection of self-pity, rendering Bastard a rare achievement among works of fiction dealing with abused children." See also Illegitimacy in fiction References 1992 American novels American autobiographical novels American bildungsromans American novels adapted into films Dutton Penguin books Fiction set in the 1950s Novels set in South Carolina Working-class literature Domestic violence in fiction Novels about rape Novels about child sexual abuse 1992 debut novels Working-class culture in South Carolina