Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

Allison's much-praised novel Bastard Out of Carolina was inspired by her childhood in Greenville, S.C., but in this memoir, adapted from a performance piece, she cuts even closer to the bone. ``We don't have a family Bible?'' the author's fourth-grade self asks her aunt. ``Child, some days we don't even have a family,'' comes the response. If Allison suffered horrors, notably rape by her stepfather when she was five, she has transmuted pain into stories, gaining control with maturity. Indeed, her title prefaces several hard-won aphorisms she uses to counterpoint her memories: ``No one is as hard as my uncles had to pretend to be.'' Her mother was a beauty, as was her sister, but Dorothy, smart and plain, felt a legacy of ugliness, one she shook off slowly as her feminism and her heart led her to lesbian relationships, often painful, finally rewarding. She is now, in her 40s, a new mother, and her stories--and life--are a triumph of love over cruelty. Read it aloud and savor the rhythms. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Aug.)