SOURCE: Hulbert, Ann. “Life on the Run.” New Republic 212, no. 4193 (29 May 1995): 40-2.

In the following review, Hulbert finds parallels between Banks's protagonist, Chappie, in Rule of the Bone and the iconic fictional characters of Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield.

Russell Banks narrates his new novel in the colloquial voice of a 14-year-old who has the possibly unique distinction of almost never using a certain four-letter word: “like,” as in “I'm like how am I going to tell my story, and he's like don't ask me.” A staple of adolescent vernacular, “like” is a hiccup of self-conscious diffidence: don't mistake me for sincere or eloquent, I'm cool and non-committal. That Chappie Dorset, a high-school dropout from a small town in the Adirondacks, is free of this tic of teenage dialect is a key to his lineage, and thus to the tradition that The Rule of the Bone aspires to...