Rattlebone. - book reviews

American Visions, Oct-Nov, 1994 by T. Andreas Spelman

Rattlebone by Maxine Clair (Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 1994. $19)--From page to page, this extraordinary debut collection of short stories affirms Clair as a fierce new literary voice. Irene "Reenie" Wilson is at the heart of many of the 11 stories that gracefully fold into one another. Her coming of age--and the transformation of family and the larger world beyond--is chronicled against a background of 1950s complacency on the cusp of the activism of the 1960s.

Reenie's story is the central force of this work, but it is surrounded by equally enthralling tales about her father, mother, "neighbor ladies," eccentric rooming house owners and her best friend, Wanda.