Rattlebone

Starred review from May 30, 1994
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.

May 29, 1995
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.

Starred review from November 1, 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.

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