SOURCE: Morton, Brian. “First of the Mohicans.” New Statesman and Society 8, no. 360 (7 July 1995): 37.

In the following review, Morton places Rule of the Bone within the context of the American literary tradition.

Uh-oh. Salinger wannabe on the scanner, Captain. “You'll probably think I'm making a lot of this up just to make me sound better than I really am or smarter or even luckier but I'm not.” That's no J D Salinger, Sulu … that's Mark Twain!

Russell Banks' prose, like Don DeLillo's, has an insistent, buttonholing quality even at its most neutral. But when it inhabits the coolly wised-up consciousness of Chappie, aka “Bone”, it's harder to get away from than a Big Issue ambush. Even allowing for the wonderful Continental Drift, this [Rule of the Bone] is the book that promotes Banks to the premier division of US novelists. In it, Banks seems aware that he is inscribing...