Rattlebone

by Maxine Clair

Overview

Too long unavailable, this luminous classic of small-town life in the segregated 1950s has "magic dust sprinkled over each and every page" (Veronica Chambers, New York Times Book Review).

Irene Wilson knows that a “no-name invisible something” has settled over her parents’ marriage and suspects her glamorous new teacher is to blame. Irene is not alone in her suspicions. In Rattlebone, a small Black town outside Kansas City in the segregated 1950s, secrets are hard to keep and growing up is a community affair.

As Irene is initiated into adult passion and loss, her family story takes its place in a tightly woven tapestry of neighbors whose griefs and joys are as vivid as her own. Rattlebone is a one-of-a-kind triumph of American fiction, one that captures an entire world through the eyes of an unforgettable heroine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946022462
Publisher:	McNally Editions
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Maxine Clair was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. She is the author of the poetry collection Coping with Gravity and the novel The October Suite. On its first publication, in 1994, Rattlebone received both the Literary Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. Clair is a professor emerita at George Washington University.

Read an Excerpt

Contents

October Brown
Lemonade
Water Seeks Its Own Level
Cherry Bomb
The Roomers
A Most Serene Girl
The Great War
Secret Love
The Creation
A Sunday Kind of Love
The Last Day of School

Table of Contents

October Brown

Lemonade

Water Seeks Its Own Level

Cherry Bomb

The Roomers

A Most Serene Girl

The Great War

Secret Love

The Creation

A Sunday Kind of Love

The Last Day of School

Editorial Reviews

I read Rattlebone when it was first published in 1994. I loved it then, and all these years later I love it more. Now I understand how rare it is to find a book that contains such indelible characters, and such enormity of heart. Welcome back, Rattlebone, may you get all the love and attention you have long deserved.”

—Ann Patchett

“Each skillful plot twist, each new, wonderful character has the effect of a sip of literary love potion. There is magic dust sprinkled over each and every page . . . Maxine Clair has offered us hope without rhetoric. She has told a story of struggle with a quietly triumphant end that says, sometimes, even in places called Rattlebone, black girls get to live happily ever after too.”

—Veronica Chambers, The New York Times Book Review

“Clair's debut short-story collection, eleven interlocked tales set in an African American outskirt of Kansas City, Kans., in the 1950s, launches her toward the front ranks of contemporary fiction . . . An utterly addictive collection by a writer to watch.”

—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Strong, melodic, and honest . . . We need stories like this to replenish us.”

—Terry McMillan

“[An] overlooked coming-of-age classic. Empathic and rich in human detail, this 1994 novel of Black life in 1950s Kansas deserves to reach a wider audience. [A] wonderful novel . . . Clair is an exquisitely empathic writer, and imbues every page with poetry . . . It deserves to be widely read, a set text, cherished.”

—Nick Duerden, The Observer

“Lyrical linked stories unfold in Rattlebone Hollow, Kansas City’s historic Black quarter circa 1950, during the halting early days of school desegregation . . . Individually compelling and collectively masterful, these resonant stories are told in cadenced prose of a ravishing, unforced eloquence. Writing this brilliant and evocative deserves a place on any shelf.

—David Wright, Library Journal, Starred Review

“Maxine Clair’s coming-of-age novel in stories, Rattlebone, is one of those books that deserves to be brought out of the shadows of African American literature and back into the spotlight it so rightly deserves . . . Anyone who reads Rattlebone will see its relationship with other important works of African American literature published in the same year, like Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory or Alice Walker’s The Complete Stories . . . It is through Blackness that these writers also say something universal . . . to begin to see the Black experience not as “other” but as one with which any reader can seek to connect . . . [Clair] has written a book that will find a special place in the hearts of all who read it.”

—Ralph Eubanks, The Sewanee Review

“Lovely, lyrical and full of charm . . . a sensitive and wise coming-of-age story.”

—Alix Madrigal, San Francisco Chronicle

“This brilliant debut belongs on the same shelf as V. S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John . . . Rattlebone is enchanting, sexy, wise, and richly imagined.”

—Howard Norman

“Told in a style that is memorable for its ability to shift tones and to capture, in rich and controlled language, new levels of consciousness . . . Clair consistently attains the poetry organic to everyday speech.”

—Michael Parker, The Washington Post

“Clair . . . is a master of subtle characterization—the ways one asserts oneself as a person of ‘quality, the formal yet musical nature of her characters' diction, the veneer of politeness in which the sisters convey their rage to each other.”

—Amy Benfer, San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

Told in a style that is memorable for its ability to shift tones and to capture, in rich and controlled language, new levels of consciousness . . . Clair consistently attains the poetry organic to everyday speech while avoiding the quaint, the forced and the patronizing.

WASHINGTON POST - Michael Parker

Strong, melodic, and honest . . . We need stories like this to replenish us.

Terry McMillan

Each skillful plot twist, each new, wonderful character has the effect of a sip of literary love potion. There is magic dust sprinkled over each and every page . . . Maxine Clair has offered us hope without rhetoric. She has told a story of struggle with a quietly triumphant end that says, sometimes, even in places called Rattlebone, black girls get to live happily ever after too.

The New York Times Book Review - Veronica Chambers

"A small, perfectly formed classic . . . Clair is an exquisitely empathic writer, and imbues every page with poetry."

The Guardian - Nick Duerden

"I read Rattlebone when it was first published in 1994. I loved it then, and all these years later I love it more. Now I understand how rare it is to find a book that contains such indelible characters, and such enormity of heart. Welcome back, Rattlebone, may you get all the love and attention you have long deserved."

Ann Patchett

This brilliant debut belongs on the same shelf as V. S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John . . . Rattlebone is enchanting, sexy, wise, and richly imagined.

Howard Norman

Maxine Clair’s coming-of-age novel in stories, Rattlebone, is one of those books that deserves to be brought out of the shadows of African American literature and back into the spotlight it so rightly deserves . . . Anyone who reads Rattlebone will see its relationship with other important works of African American literature published in the same year, like Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory or Alice Walker’s The Complete Stories . . . It is through Blackness that these writers also say something universal . . . to begin to see the Black experience not as “other” but as one with which any reader can seek to connect . . . [Clair] has written a book that will find a special place in the hearts of all who read it."

The Sewanee Review - Ralph Eubanks

★ 11/01/2022

In this book originally published in 1994, lyrical linked stories unfold in Rattlebone Hollow, Kansas City's historic Black quarter circa 1950, during the halting early days of school desegregation, centered around the coming of age of Irene "Reenie" Wilson, a young girl navigating the perplexing terrors and thrills of adolescence. Woven through Reenie's impressions, readers glimpse others in this close-knit community: the longings of her wayward father on the fateful night the levee breaks; her long-suffering mother's heartbroken musings; the wry calculations of a boarding house proprietress about her husband's infidelities; the poignant redemption of that husband, since widowed. Veering recklessly through these lives is Reenie's schoolteacher October Brown, a nearly mythic figure "no more careful than the sun is careful about coming up," and the heroine of Clair's subsequent novel October Suite. VERDICT Individually compelling and collectively masterful, these resonant stories are told in cadenced prose of a ravishing, unforced eloquence. Writing this brilliant and evocative deserves a place on any shelf.

Library Journal

Clair's debut short-story collection, 11 interlocked tales set in an African American outskirt of Kansas City, Kans., in the 1950s, launches her toward the front ranks of contemporary fiction. Of the several narrative voices, both first- and third-person, that tell of life in Rattlebone, Irene ``Reenie'' Wilson's occupies the passionate center, with well over half the stories related in her words, which evolve from a convincing childspeak vernacular to an engrossingly poetic prose that follows her coming-of-age amid the breakings and reshapings of her family and community, as well as of the unknown world around her. The opening story details the eight-year-old Reenie's experiences stemming from the first day of the school year. Awed by the new teacher, October Brown, and by local lore about the white mark (``a Devil's kiss'') on October's face, Reenie's fear turns to adoration and then to hate as she realizes the destruction that the woman has wrought upon the Wilson family. From the girl's suspicions about the spiritual ambitions of an itinerant white nun through various friendships and alliances, the accidental death of her first crush, her own near-death experience and, finally, her high school graduation, Reenie's lofty childhood motto, ``I am in this world, but not of it,'' aptly describes the inspired insight and strength that she comes to wield. Interspersed among Reenie's chronicle are equally intense stories about her father, James; rooming-house owners Thomas and Lydia Pemberton; Irene's mother, Pearlean; and the growing up of Irene's neighbor, playmate and competitor, Wanda. These and Reenie's own tales add up to an utterly addictive collection by a writer to watch. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

YA-Set in the black Kansas City of the 1950s, these interconnected short stories engulf readers in lyrical language, poignant events, and vibrant characters as they tell the troubles and triumphs of Reenie Wilson's coming of age. Reenie and the other townsfolk work their way into readers' hearts via Clair's wonderful writing, making life in Rattlebone a touching reality. YAs will share Reenie's growing pains; smile at parochial, small-town folk and their idiosyncracies; and broaden their sense of history and bias. A treasure for all libraries.-Jessica Lahr, Edison High School, Fairfax County, VA

School Library Journal