Townie

Aug 02, 2011 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

The major focus of this soul-baring memoir of Andre Dubus III is in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a city bordering New Hampshire, in northeastern Massachusetts. It was a former mill town and industrial city, which in the 19th and early half of the 20th century was known as the “Queen Slipper City” because of its tanneries and shoe manufacturing. They boasted that 1/10 of the shoes made in the US were made there. It is located on the Merrimack River. I lived there for a few years and found it to be a...more

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May 16, 2011 Bonnie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-books, auto-biographies-and-memoirs

I have never read any of Dubus' books, because back when he was popular I Didn't Do Tragic. His memoir got good buzz, though, so I decided to give it a try. Let's just say that I don't plan to read any of his fictional books, ever.

I feel bad for Dubus. He got a raw deal, with a father who couldn’t be bothered to spend time with his children and a mom who was too busy and exhausted to pay adequate attention to them. With the exception of his younger sister, Dubus' siblings were adrift and had pro...more I have never read any of Dubus' books, because back when he was popular I Didn't Do Tragic. His memoir got good buzz, though, so I decided to give it a try. Let's just say that I don't plan to read any of his fictional books, ever.

I feel bad for Dubus. He got a raw deal, with a father who couldn’t be bothered to spend time with his children and a mom who was too busy and exhausted to pay adequate attention to them. With the exception of his younger sister, Dubus' siblings were adrift and had problems with drugs. His naturally small size made him a bully-magnet in the rough neighborhoods he grew up in after his parents' divorce. And despite all that he was able to make something of himself and not die young and violently like so many he knew.

That doesn't mean I like his memoir, though. It commits the cardinal sin of books: it was boring. Horribly, horribly boring. Not that his life wasn't compelling. Growing up in the bad part of town led to some craziness and horror and childhood (especially one with so many siblings) is natural fodder. But Dubus' writing style made everything that should have been interesting incredibly ponderous, dull and choppy. It's even more surprising given the fact that there were so many fights that took place (Dubus bulked himself up as a teen and had a short-fuse and a childhood surrounded by violence...there were a lot of bar/street fights).But the fights were semi-random and I could never understand nor bring myself to care how they started or who they were with. Truthfully, it mostly seemed that Dubus just attacked people whenever they stepped out of line or he was feeling upset, so there wasn’t really any rhyme or reason to begin with and his writing style just muddled things.

The book was mostly chronological but sometimes wasn’t, which was confusing. There were so many people drifting in and out with no real sense of who they were that I stopped bothering to keep track. Even his own siblings never come into focus. There’s a vague sense of them: Jeb is the artsy, suicidal one; Suzanne is the classic Little Girl Lost, using drugs and sex to fill the void created by daddy issues; Nicole is the studious one, hiding in her room from the broken world and dysfunctional family she’s trapped in. But that’s just the surface and I can tell you nothing more about any of them, especially Nicole who I was most interested in (she seemed the most together of them all and I’m curious how she did it). There are giant holes in the timeline. Dubus is interested in a Persian girl and then suddenly he’s moved to Texas and no mention is made of how their relationship ended. The middle school art teacher who is sleeping with Dubus' brother Jeb (while Jeb was her student!) randomly appears and just as suddenly she’s gone from the narrative. Dubus is suddenly a parole officer (or something…)! Dubus is suddenly married! Dubus decided to go to college despite being a punk who according to the narrative had little interest in school! WHAT WAS GOING ON?!?

Also, I hated Andre Dubus senior more than I hated any other villain I've read about this year (and I've read some dark stuff). Maybe he wasn't supposed to be a villain, but I feel like he was one and I found him incredibly despicable. I probably hate him more knowing that he was real, while the other villains I've read about recently were fictional. Dubus senior was a horrible, horrible man with few redeeming qualities. He was the worst father someone could be short of being actually abusive. He was a chronic philanderer who couldn’t stop himself—and truthfully, likely never tried—from screwing his students even when he was married. He was a drunk, a man-child, a cheater. He was neglectful of those he should have loved and cared for and almost pathologically selfish. And this is even through Andre Junior’s vaguely sympathetic (though hurt) lense! Some people like senior’s writing (I will bet you I would find it boring and pretentious) and he was apparently charming and willing to help strangers, so I’ll give him that. So I guess he had some redeeming qualities, but I still find him one of the most miserable people I’ve read about this year. I wish he was fictional.

In the end, Dubus managed to reveal everything without revealing anything. He writes about painful parts of his youth that I think are brave to reveal but never gets close enough to give the reader a sense of anything. I hate to say it about a professional author, but I wish someone else had written his life story. (less)

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Mar 25, 2011 Richard Wise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

Searingly honest coming of age story.

Though it relies on a somewhat shopworn theme; weak skinny 90 pound weakling dreams of becoming super hero, buys weights, works out, gets strong then with a true honesty escapes the shopworn conclusion by simply admitting that he came something of a bully himself.

Abandoned by his father, raised by a single mother, Dubus gives you a real taste and smell of the gritty realities of growing up suburban poor in an America mill town in the 1970s.

On to The House o...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was 187 pages too long. A tormented tale of Dubus' childhood leading to reconciliation with his father, Dubus seems almost hyper in his recounting of the anger he felt as an abandoned (par pere) child in Haverhill. The memoir is filled with fights, vengeance, drugs, booze, and unhappiness. The reader begs for the redemption moments in which the author comes to terms with his manhood and accepts his talent as a writer. Sadly, the redemption is too little, too late. As much as I admired...more This book was 187 pages too long. A tormented tale of Dubus' childhood leading to reconciliation with his father, Dubus seems almost hyper in his recounting of the anger he felt as an abandoned (par pere) child in Haverhill. The memoir is filled with fights, vengeance, drugs, booze, and unhappiness. The reader begs for the redemption moments in which the author comes to terms with his manhood and accepts his talent as a writer. Sadly, the redemption is too little, too late. As much as I admired THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG and as much as I adore Andre as a person, teacher, and writer, I feel that his editors let him down with this piece. Nevertheless, I cannot wait to attend his reading at Salem State University on September 29 to hear his account of the writing of this piece.

The memoir reminded me of therapy. Andre was on the couch, recounting the same story again and again. There were bursts of hope, as when he joined the cross-country team in high school (p 83) and developed new habits, friends, and self-respect. Yet, at the same time, his physical prowess became a means to get revenge on those who had taunted him and his friends as he grew up. He became a respectable boxer, but too often his fists played Russian roulette with his future as he took on people in situations that were far too challenging for his ability. For the next 200 pages, we alternate from hope to despair, from anger to understanding. As the memoir chugs to its conclusion, Dubus writes about the novel he was writing at the time... "I was too emotionally close to to this story to write honestly about it" (319). He adds, "I'd been talking and talking but not listening. The result were scenes that did not ring true, characters who felt more like marionettes than people, a story whose rising arc felt contrived and predictable and false." And my feeling in reading this memoir was that Dubus may still be too close to the details of his own life, and still too unresolved, to write a more conclusive piece. I felt a bit shorted in the final parts of the memoir because Dubus has become a husband and father and yet he did not really explain how the angry young townie was transformed by the love of Fontaine.

The final scenes of the memoir focus on the death of his father, Andre Dubus. In many ways, the memoir is an attempt to come to grips with the impact of his father's leaving the family (wife and 4 children) and his father's general emotional absence. And although there is reconciliation, there are some things, as my friend Jay Woodruff says, "you don't get over as much as get around." The scenes of building his father's coffin with his brother and of digging the grave in Haverhill are powerful and convincing to this former gravedigger. So the memoir was touching, but I am left with a sadness about the residual pain and anger that I still see in the author.(less)

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Dec 31, 2011 Jeana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-memiors, firstreads-giveaway-books-i-won

Townie is the story of a boy and his father. This is a book I'd been avoiding reading because of its sheer volume. Aren't memoirs supposed to be short?

This memoir is very "hard." By that, I mean that it takes you into a very hard childhood, where a child is lost and unsafe and unstable. He gets beat up and threatened everywhere he turns; ignored by his father; neglected by his poor single mother who is just trying to get by. One day, as he witnesses a grown man beating up his little brother and...more Townie is the story of a boy and his father. This is a book I'd been avoiding reading because of its sheer volume. Aren't memoirs supposed to be short?

This memoir is very "hard." By that, I mean that it takes you into a very hard childhood, where a child is lost and unsafe and unstable. He gets beat up and threatened everywhere he turns; ignored by his father; neglected by his poor single mother who is just trying to get by. One day, as he witnesses a grown man beating up his little brother and doesn't do a thing about it--just standing there as if invisible to the world--he makes a decision. It's that instead of being the one bullied, he'd toughen himself up and fight back. And my did he fight back! At every turn, he fights. He goes looking for fights, sometimes as a way to deal with his hard life and it seems punching someone is the one way he's able to relieve his pent-up emotion and stress. He's not ignored--isn't invisible anymore--when he's punching someone with this first clean punch into the face. The fighting goes on and on and on. Much too long for me.

Then he discovers that he gets a similar satisfaction from writing. He's able to relieve his heartbreak over his broken childhood and his father who was never there for him or his brother and sisters. And his relationship with his father improves. His father respects him and while this gives Dubus III a great deal of satisfaction, he always feels like his father just doesn't quite get that he should have been more, should have done more for his children. It's heartbreaking when Dubus III takes care of his father after the accident and is more of a caretaker and "father" to him than the real father ever was. A paragraph from the memoir: "I'd drive down the hill feeling more joy than sadness. I had never grown anything before, never planted a seed and watered it till something blossomed that had been waiting there all along. At least I thought I hadn't. But I had. It was me I had built up. And I imagined that helping Pop get his strength back gave the kind of sustained creative satisfaction a gardener must feel, or a coach, or a father."

In his newfound love of writing, Dubus discovers that the only way to truly write well is to disappear or be invisible, what he had worked so hard not to be. So beautiful, really, the way this all comes together like this.

Dubus still can't quite break free of his addiction to fights and really, it's almost as if he's trying to protect the little brothers of the world by trying to make it right, even through his fighting. He does realize, though, that the fighting is just another wrong, even if he is trying to right someone else's wrong, if that makes any sense at all. It's sweet that he is trying to stick up for the underdog, most of the time, like women being hurt by men or protecting children.

The memoir doesn't go chronologically. No, instead he jumps around a lot to give it more of a "novel" build and climax. That I appreciate. Dubus can write. He's an amazing writer and it was interesting to see how he turned his hard life into something worthwhile. My one criticism is that it took so long to get into. I think the novel would have flowed a little better if they'd weeded out some of the fighting. It just got to be too much. I almost stopped reading a third of the way through, thinking this was much too "hard" for me to read, but I'm so glad I didn't.

I wept through the last 100 pages. It all became so alive and real. Maybe it's because I lost my own father not too long ago. Maybe it's the beauty of Dubus' journey. Maybe it's his prose. Not sure, but I know that it was well worth the time it took to read 400 pages.(less)

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Apr 19, 2011 Neil White rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dubus's novels are difficult to read without getting worked up into a frenzy that involves symptoms not unlike severe stress or paranoia. At least for me, anyway. Shortness of breath, increased heart rate, even sweats - these things happen. His memoir does not include the same scenes of riveting tension and personal anguish that populate his other works, but I found myself still getting worked up reading this - especially the early scenes of his torment as a young child.

A skinny kid, raised by a...more Dubus's novels are difficult to read without getting worked up into a frenzy that involves symptoms not unlike severe stress or paranoia. At least for me, anyway. Shortness of breath, increased heart rate, even sweats - these things happen. His memoir does not include the same scenes of riveting tension and personal anguish that populate his other works, but I found myself still getting worked up reading this - especially the early scenes of his torment as a young child.

A skinny kid, raised by a single mother, growing up in some of the roughest neighborhoods Massachusetts has to offer, tormented by bullies every day - Dubus eventually learned to fight back. He learned how to fight back a little too well, and in the process discovered he had quite a bit of rage in him. (Read through and it's easy to understand why.) At it's beginning this is in some ways a typical growing-up-rough memoir - the poverty, the bullying, the almost religious weight training until he doesn't get picked on very much (all that's missing is a montage song, really), but it's carried along by Dubus's sincere engaging prose that keeps it from being anything but standard or boring. He doesn't stop there, though. Because this memoir carries him through to adulthood, and because he doesn't pull any punches on himself (or his victims [sorry]), we have his inner turmoil with what all this anger and violence does when it transforms into guilt. I was surprised (pleasantly so) when this became as much a meditation on violence and its consequences (not only on the body, but the soul), as a chronicle of boyhood.

But while that's a large portion of the book, Dubus's relationship with his father was, at least for me, the most rewarding and touching part. Having read both Andre Dubus Sr and Dubus III, I often wondered what their relationship with each other was - competitive? Supportive? Abusive? Nonexistent? I was interested to find out it was hardly simple enough to boil down to any one adjective. Dubus Sr left little Andre's mother when he was young, but there was some continued interaction. The elder Andre seemed like a difficult man, sometimes quiet, but often passionate and loud. Thankfully he was not abusive, but his absence on a day-to-day level no doubt had an impact. I think the young, skinny, frightened Andre could have used a strong, supportive, 'manly' father figure in his life. Instead he had a distant stranger who obviously loved them, but struggled with expressing that. This is beautifully expressed in the opening pages of the book, where young Andre, desperate from some one-on-one time with his father, agrees to go on a weekend run with him. The problem is he has no good shoes, and having never seriously run before, has no idea the lengths his father intends to go. By the end of the 10+ mile run, Andre is struggling to keep up with his father - he is out of breath, and the shoes have devastated his feet so much that his socks are soaked in blood. He never complains, though, and finishes the run.

Dubus's relationship with his father resonates throughout the book, becomes the heart & soul of the last third, as younger Andre comes into his own as a writer, both as a way to escape the plague of anger & violence, and as a way to somehow connect with his absent father. They see more of each other, but it is in more of a 'buddy' capacity than 'father & son.' Nevertheless, it was touching to see both of them struggle, and even though it's through the lens of younger Andre's pen, one gets the sense he is genuinely telling the truth as he sees it - he doesn't always shy away from criticism, but he gives credit where credit is due.

If you're unfamiliar with either Dubus's work, I might suggest reading some first, not only because both of them could easily be included in any discussion of America's finest contemporary writers, but also to perhaps get a sense of the characters in this story. This memoir is a fantastic read on many levels - a coming-of-age in rough circumstances tale, a meditation on the nature of violence, a story of father and son - but a knowledge of their work, and the glimpse into their personalities it provides, would definitely make this excellent book a richer experience. Andre Dubus III has a way with words that's difficult to pinpoint. 'House of Sand and Fog' and 'The Garden of Last Days' are two of the most gut-wrenching novels I've read, and while he may lack the stylistic flare of a Cormac McCarthy or James Joyce, there's something about the brutal sincerity and honest emotional choices of his character that puts the reader in the characters heart and head like few other writers could hope to do. 'Townie' may be a true story that lacks the confluence of various conflicting tragedies and circumstances that are the trademarks of his novels, but that brutal sincerity and honest emotion is still there. Reading this, it's easy to see where he gets it.(less)

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Sep 26, 2011 Dean rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

I got two thirds of the way through this book and I surrended. If this was fiction, I would say that the main character is a damaged and flawed person with serious anger issues. Sadly, it is a biography and I just cannot care about a man who in his mid twenties needs to run around a town looking to beat up people for what he thinks are insults. Or looking for insults so he can get into a fight. No signs of redemption, although, since he wrote some good books later on one can assume he figures ou...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Won Book of the Year Adult Non-Fiction—2012 Indie Choice Awards
Amazon Best Book of the Month February 2011

An acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him—until he was saved by writing.

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. To protect himself and those he loved, Andre sta

...more

Won Book of the Year Adult Non-Fiction—2012 Indie Choice Awards
Amazon Best Book of the Month February 2011

An acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him—until he was saved by writing.

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. To protect himself and those he loved, Andre started pumping iron and learned to use his fists so well that he became the kind of man who could send others to the hospital with one punch, and did. Irresistibly drawn to stand up for the underdog, he was on a fast track to getting killed—or killing someone else.

Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds between town and gown, between the hard drinking, drugging, and fighting of “townies” and the ambitions of well-fed students debating books and ideas, couldn’t have been more stark or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by finally putting pen to paper himself did young Andre come into his own, discovering the power of empathy in channeling the stories of others—and ultimately bridging the rift between his father and himself.

An unforgettable book, Townie is a riveting and profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: Rarely has the process of becoming a writer seemed as organic and--dare I say it--moral as it does in Andre Dubus III's clear-eyed and compassionate memoir, Townie. You might think that following his father's trade would have been natural and even obvious for the son and namesake of Andre Dubus, one of the most admired short story writers of his time, but it was anything but. His father left when he was 10, and as his mother worked long hours to keep them fed, her four children mostly raised themselves, stumbling through house parties and street fights in their Massachusetts mill town, so cut off from the larger world that when someone mentioned "Manhattan" when Andre was in college he didn't know what they were talking about. What he did know, and what he recalls with detailed intensity, were the battles in bars and front yards, brutal to men and women alike, that first gave him discipline, as he built himself from a fearful kid into a first-punch, hair-trigger bruiser, and then empathy, as, miraculously, he pulled himself back from the violence that threatened to define him. And it was out of that empathy that, wanting to understand the stories of the victims of brutality as well as those whose pain drove them to dish it out, he began to write, reconciling with his father and eventually giving us novels like House of Sand and Fog and now this powerful and big-hearted memoir. --Tom Nissley

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Long before he became the highly acclaimed author of House of Sand and Fog, Dubus shuffled and punched his way through a childhood and youth full of dysfunction, desperation, and determination. Just after he turned 12, Dubus's family fell rapidly into shambles after his father--the prominent writer Andre Dubus--not only left his wife for a younger woman but also left the family in distressing poverty on the violent and drug-infested side of their Massachusetts mill town. For a few years, Dubus escaped into drugs, embracing the apathetic "no-way-out" attitude of his friends. After having his bike stolen, being slapped around by some of the town's bullies, and watching his brother and mother humiliated by some of the town's thugs, Dubus started lifting weights at home and boxing at the local gym. Modeling himself on the Walking Tall sheriff, Buford Pusser, Dubus paid back acts of physical violence with physical violence. Ultimately, he decided to take up his pen and write his way up from the bottom and into a new relationship with his father. In this gritty and gripping memoir, Dubus bares his soul in stunning and page-turning prose. (Feb.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Apr 25, 2013 Tiffany rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I grew up in Haverhill, Mass, and lied about being from elsewhere for most of my life. It was a rough town in rough years.

Mr. Dubus perfectly evoked the violence and hardscrabble existence of living there. He honored the New England tradition of providing real estate as a character and moreover he did justice to Haverhill by making her as worthy a character as Miss Havisham: formerly beautiful now past her prime, a wreck but one deserving of pity.

How interesting that he called himself a "Townie...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Ruth Seeley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Andre Dubus III. I struggled with The House of Sand and Fog (although it was made into a fantastic movie, one of the few instances when I've preferred the movie to the book - The Kite Runner was the other one). And I have no memory whatsoever of The Garden of Last Days, although I remember liking it better than Sand and Fog.

Initially I found this memoir of Dubus' childhood and youth a bit of a struggle. But I persevered, and I'm very glad I did. I wouldn't agre...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another audiobook, chosen at random from Seattle Public Library (I love the Overdrive app). While this book is long (~ 14 hours) it was a very well written story and I got a lot of sewing done while listening. My jury is still out as to whether I liked it or not, but I did finish, I think mainly because I was hoping and waiting for some good news or luck to come across this family. It was a bit hard to read time after time about drinking, failed marriage, physical fighting (I would call it assau...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Elge rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I totally agree with Dwight Garner of the New York Times when he writes of this book, "Townie is a better, harder book than anything (Dubus III) has yet writer; it pays off on every bet that's been placed on him. A sleek muscle car of a memoir."

The core theme of the memoir is men's, particularly his, relationship to violence. As a kid he was a victim of it. This part of the book was hard to read and I almost bailed out on the book because I wanted him to stop being a victim and stand up for hims...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Janet Gardner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A memoir of the childhood and early adulthood of the author of the remarkable novel House of Sand and Fog (and other books, but that’s what I know him for). After his parents split up, life was precarious for Dubus, his three siblings, and his mother, with frequent forced moves and rarely decent coats and shoes or quite enough to eat. Take an already angry and defensive kid and put him in those circumstances, and it’s a recipe for violence. Dubus learns to fight and to fight hard, and it marks t...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Jrobertus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a fascinating memoir. Dubus is the son of a well regarded short story author, also Andre Dubus. Young Andre was raised in a very tough parts of the Merrimack River valley (MA/NH) by his mother, after his gifted daddy ran off with the first of a series of younger women. He was often beaten by bullies until he took up body building and boxing and became a feared fighter in his own right. He had an intermittent relation with his father who taught in a small college nearby and their relation...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Abbe added it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-library

Amazon.com Review

Townie. You might think that following his father's trade would have been natural and even obvious for the son and namesake of Andre Dubus, one of the most admired short story writers of his time, but it was anything but. His father left when he was 10, and as his mother worked long hours to keep them fed, her four children mostly raised themselves, stumbling through house parties and street fights in their Massachusetts mill town, so cut off from the larger world that when so

...more Amazon.com Review

Townie. You might think that following his father's trade would have been natural and even obvious for the son and namesake of Andre Dubus, one of the most admired short story writers of his time, but it was anything but. His father left when he was 10, and as his mother worked long hours to keep them fed, her four children mostly raised themselves, stumbling through house parties and street fights in their Massachusetts mill town, so cut off from the larger world that when someone mentioned "Manhattan" when Andre was in college he didn't know what they were talking about. What he did know, and what he recalls with detailed intensity, were the battles in bars and front yards, brutal to men and women alike, that first gave him discipline, as he built himself from a fearful kid into a first-punch, hair-trigger bruiser, and then empathy, as, miraculously, he pulled himself back from the violence that threatened to define him. And it was out of that empathy that, wanting to understand the stories of the victims of brutality as well as those whose pain drove them to dish it out, he began to write, reconciling with his father and eventually giving us novels like --Tom Nissley

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Long before he became the highly acclaimed author of House of Sand and Fog, Dubus shuffled and punched his way through a childhood and youth full of dysfunction, desperation, and determination. Just after he turned 12, Dubus's family fell rapidly into shambles after his father--the prominent writer Andre Dubus--not only left his wife for a younger woman but also left the family in distressing poverty on the violent and drug-infested side of their Massachusetts mill town. For a few years, Dubus escaped into drugs, embracing the apathetic "no-way-out" attitude of his friends. After having his bike stolen, being slapped around by some of the town's bullies, and watching his brother and mother humiliated by some of the town's thugs, Dubus started lifting weights at home and boxing at the local gym. Modeling himself on the Walking Tall sheriff, Buford Pusser, Dubus paid back acts of physical violence with physical violence. Ultimately, he decided to take up his pen and write his way up from the bottom and into a new relationship with his father. In this gritty and gripping memoir, Dubus bares his soul in stunning and page-turning prose. (Feb.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Aug 30, 2012 Mary Rowen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The memoir Townie by Andre Dubus III is a striking and worthwhile read for so many reasons. It’s always interesting to learn how a bestselling author got his start, but I’d always assumed that Dubus—best known for his dark and gripping novel House of Sand and Fog—had it a bit easier than most. After all, he’s the son of one of America’s greatest short story writers (the late Andre Dubus II).

But Townie makes it clear that this wasn’t the case for the younger Dubus. It turns out that he grew up in...more The memoir Townie by Andre Dubus III is a striking and worthwhile read for so many reasons. It’s always interesting to learn how a bestselling author got his start, but I’d always assumed that Dubus—best known for his dark and gripping novel House of Sand and Fog—had it a bit easier than most. After all, he’s the son of one of America’s greatest short story writers (the late Andre Dubus II).

But Townie makes it clear that this wasn’t the case for the younger Dubus. It turns out that he grew up in extreme poverty during the 1970s, moving around from one bad neighborhood to another with his mother and three siblings. At first, it seems as though his father abandoned his wife and kids, but as the story progresses, we come to realize it was much more complicated than that. The elder Dubus was actually a sweet and loving man, but his shyness and need to write often made it impossible for him to be there for his children during their youth.

What we see, then, for the majority of the book, is the younger Dubus doing all he can to survive, primarily through violence. Alcohol, drugs, and the victims of substance abuse rage all around him, and it appears as though Dubus III might succumb as well. In high school, he and his brother steal, skip school, drink, and get high on a daily basis. His sister sells drugs and often uses the money she earns to put food on the table. Later, she is brutally raped. Fighting seems to be the only way to remain afloat.

So Dubus fights. And fights. Sometimes he wins; sometimes he loses; always he feels confused and distraught afterwards. Plenty of stories about male violence have been written, but I’ve never read one that explores its emotional effects as profoundly—or as personally—as Townie.

Of course, we know Dubus will escape this cycle, as he is now one of America’s most influential writers. But the tension in Townie remains high, as we watch him take his first tentative steps into the world of writing. We feel his frustration as he sends his first short story out to ten magazines and gets rejected by the first nine, and his joy when he eventually gets published (with no apparent assistance from his father). Even better is getting to witness Dubus III and his famous dad become true friends, especially after the senior Dubus is critically injured in a car accident.

I felt a personal connection with this book as well, as I grew up in the Merrimack Valley, just a few miles from Dubus’ Haverhill neighborhood. There’s nothing quite like reading a true story that takes place so close in time and proximity to your childhood home; it makes the streets you once traveled, the places you visited, the restaurants you frequented larger than life. It was also chilling to discover that the Capt’n Chris restaurant in Haverhill—a favorite of my younger brother—employed not only Dubus III, but also Charles E. Pierce, who would eventually confess to being a serial child killer. The scene in which Pierce threatens to take Dubus’ life is one I won’t soon forget.

If you’re a fan of either Dubus, Townie is a must-read. Ditto if you’re interested in gaining a better understanding of the compulsion certain men feel to fight repeatedly. But Townie is more than just an interesting memoir or a book about male violence. It’s a work of non-fiction that reads like a novel; a straightforward story about good people doing their best in a world where things are often much harder than they appear. After reading Townie, it’s much easier for me to understand where Dubus got his ideas for House of Sand and Fog. His compassion for the human race—particularly people who struggle with things beyond their control—is found on every page, so that even though there’s much sadness to be found here, we’re left with a strong sense of hope.

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Aug 12, 2012 Nancy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Townie is a memoir about a boy from the Boston area who grew up in a broken home in the 70's. His parents divorced when he was a child and his dad played a minor role in his life although he was geographically close. He tells of how his natural shy reserve only put a target on his back. As a poor kid with little prospects he learns to fight, stumbles through school and eventually gets a college education. However, this serves him poorly since he returns to the life he knew and works construction...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Alice Meloy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading House of Sand and Fog, I was amazed at Dubus's ability to get inside the hearts and minds of his characters. Now that I've also read his memoir, I can understand how he was able to do so. In this gritty and soul-bearing story, Dubus tells what it was like for him to grow up outside Boston in the 1970s, one of four children of a single mother trying to make ends meet and a largely absent father who was becoming a highly acclaimed writer. The object of harassment and bullying, Dubus learne...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Karen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adandoned

It was like getting a tooth drilled or being hit over the head by the same damn bat. I'll pass on this one- thank you very much.

The same scenes repeated endlessly. Hopelessness, cruelty, fear and abandonment abound in this book. It's a bleak tale and a place I choose not to visit any longer than reading the 67 pages I spent there.

I've believed Dubus to be brilliant based on "House of Sand and Fog" but the writing in this book is meandering, inconclusive and confusing. Often I would read a sente...more It was like getting a tooth drilled or being hit over the head by the same damn bat. I'll pass on this one- thank you very much.

The same scenes repeated endlessly. Hopelessness, cruelty, fear and abandonment abound in this book. It's a bleak tale and a place I choose not to visit any longer than reading the 67 pages I spent there.

I've believed Dubus to be brilliant based on "House of Sand and Fog" but the writing in this book is meandering, inconclusive and confusing. Often I would read a sentence and feel like I had just read that same sentence, after looking back through the pages, I would indeed find the same sentence slightly altered in chapters prior. I also think my distaste for violence, competition and urban environments totally jaded my viewpoint of this book.

I love stories that tell of the capacity of humans to endure and overcome adversity but in these types of stories there is usually an inner light within the protagonist and glimmer of hope, feelings of repentance or desire. Dubus tells a tale of desiring only to escape, get high and return the violence to those who bullied him. He writes as if detached and distant from the young man in the story.

Another Good Read reviewer stated it beautifully "The focus for most of the book is on his horrible childhood and how weightlifting and fighting (street fighting, not boxing) gave him confidence. It's the sort of testosterone-heavy story that I usually avoid at all costs. I really could have used an adult perspective throughout the book—most of the time it's so claustrophobically inside his own adolescent head that it seems his adult self continues to think this way. Even when he has an "epiphany" towards the end, it comes off as ridiculous and makes me wonder if he ever actually grew up.

Worse, the writing is awkward, meandering, and repetitive. It jumps back and forth through time for no reason except that it was badly edited. If this is the story that's been fighting to get out all this time, I'd think he'd spend a little more effort making it as good as his fiction. (less)

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Jun 28, 2012 Gayle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I almost stopped reading this a fourth of the way through. The gritty violence, the spare survival of the Dubus children gave me a nightmare and I didn't relish being in their world. However, a friend recommended the book to me; and my degree in literature, if nothing else, taught me to persevere. I'm glad I did. The book details the kids' improbable survival and ultimate ascendancy over unfortunate circumstances and neglect, as well as coming to terms with complex tendencies engrained from surv...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Tracy added it · review of another edition

This is a memoir that revels in visceral/violent behavior in response to a childhood where basic parent abandonment and poverty are ubiquitous. Nostalgia is stressed repeatedly for a time of immense narcotic use, hard drinking (a habit still practiced by the author with verve), and beating others within inches of their lives simply to feel connected to the world or to right some perceived wrong in the life of a stranger. A constant search for a father/son relationship with Dubus Jr. is never rea...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Beryl rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Beryl by: Found it in a bookstore

A strangely beautiful memoir by Andre Dubois, the son of the famed short-story writer Andre Dubois, in which violence dictates the direction his life would take until one day he began to put stories down on paper.

As a puny, bullied young boy, Andre had decided to become as threatening as the neighboring kids around him. Building muscle defined his efforts. His interior rage and a newly developed skill at boxing propelled him to violence at any provocation. He seemed destined for any early death...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

TOWNIE by Andre Dubus III

An unforgettable book. Dubus III seems to be chasing his famous, but mostly absent, father's ghost. This book is all about identity crisis of a boy and his siblings abandoned by their father, and left with their mother who struggles to feed, clothe and house her children. Andre, small and shy, is beaten up 3-4 times a week by bullies in every school and town they move to. He tries without much success to protect his siblings. His mother is too busy working or having affa...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The path to violence is not one that people can empathize with very easily because it becomes the answer to every question and is the antithesis of a functioning society. Andre Dubus finds himself along this path in “Townie a Memoir”, when his father has an affair, causing the entire family to live at the poverty level and in neighborhoods where kids fight with each other over eye contact. After constant fear of encountering fights he decides that he could either let people keep rearranging his...more The path to violence is not one that people can empathize with very easily because it becomes the answer to every question and is the antithesis of a functioning society. Andre Dubus finds himself along this path in “Townie a Memoir”, when his father has an affair, causing the entire family to live at the poverty level and in neighborhoods where kids fight with each other over eye contact. After constant fear of encountering fights he decides that he could either let people keep rearranging his face, or fight back.
Andre, constantly wanting to be invisible and liked, idolized movie stars like Clint Eastwood, and wanted to be the man that fought back and stood up for what he thought was right. His father constantly asked about his life, but throughout the entirety of his life, Andre never told him anything. He wrote this memoir so well that I could feel the tension and social class separation between Andre and his father as they were speaking. In one chapter, he speaks of walking around a neighborhood with his friends, when one of them takes a brick, and in a random act of violence, hits a defenseless woman with it. Later, he wonders how his father could ever understand anything about his life.
Midway through the novel, Dubus used a metaphor for violence that remained constant throughout the rest of the story, and before it. He said that violence is like a membrane that only the will can break. If broken, there isn’t anything stopping the person from committing repeated acts of violence. Andre bulks up and fights the bullies that repeated abuse his younger brother. Later he begins to spiral out of control and become the bully he hated. His dad teaches him that writing can be an outlet for anger, although the anger and violence seems to linger even towards the end of the memoir.
Dubus uses many chapters to show events that caused him to repeat that choice of being violent. His brother almost commits suicide, his sister has an abusive husband, and his siblings are constantly abused by neighborhood kids, anywhere they move. He uses many metaphors to get his message across and towards the end of the novel he sets himself up as the hero of the story, the Clint Eastwood that fights the bullies and makes them wish they never broke their violence membrane.
The Memoir is cleverly written and Dubus never has a pity moment anywhere in the piece. He says the events as they occur and rationalizes the decisions he had to make with the situations that led to them. This memoir truly showed me how to set up people in a non-fiction piece without putting one’s pride in the dirt. He also showed me how a person’s life can have a story if ideas like violence and poverty are constant themes throughout each chapter. This memoir stood on its own as a story of a man who had to deal with having too little power, and not enough.

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Sep 22, 2011 Shauna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Townies everywhere, Massholes

I downloaded this as an e-book exclusively because I used to live on the North Shore and worked in Haverhill, MA, as a Mental Health Counselor and I was curious about the roots of what is now a rusty, lonely and crumbling community struggling to stay afloat. Turns out my connection to the town in "Townie" was the least compelling part of the tale. Dubus is a straight-up contradiction, a person I simply could not characterize in any way that makes sense, and in fact I think that's the only possib...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: rich kids who went to University with a healthy townie population

Shelves: 2011

As my eyes desperately wandered the stacks at the local library for something to read they fell upon this book. As a fan of Dubus's books, House of Sand and Fog and Garden of Last Days, I thought him to be a real master of conflict. Now reading his memoir I understand why. Growing up hardscrabble on the East Coast, fighting, poor, child of divorce, being conflicted himself, it makes sense that he would be able to articulate that so well. Also, for a memoir this book reads like a novel - regardle...more

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Sep 05, 2011 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Memoir has to be one of the most difficult forms to deliver and with “Townie”, Andre Dubus III (AD) delivers the goods. The son of Andre Dubus, considered my many critics to be Americas Chekov this is no mean feat. Growing up the son of a soon to be famous writer in Massachusetts sounds compelling but the story Dubus tells in Townie is anything but – the second oldest of four children, his father left the family living in the working class town of Haverhill while he taught at private Bradford Co...more Memoir has to be one of the most difficult forms to deliver and with “Townie”, Andre Dubus III (AD) delivers the goods. The son of Andre Dubus, considered my many critics to be Americas Chekov this is no mean feat. Growing up the son of a soon to be famous writer in Massachusetts sounds compelling but the story Dubus tells in Townie is anything but – the second oldest of four children, his father left the family living in the working class town of Haverhill while he taught at private Bradford College only several miles away but many social strata removed from Haverhill. AD recounts his hardscrabble upbringing in Haverhill and other deserted mill towns of Massachusetts, seeing his father only once a week while growing up. His mother with little in the way of skills took a number of menial jobs to provide a spartan life for her children. Young Andre found that in order to literally protect himself and his siblings from the thugs that lived in the surround avenues he became a fighter. Through weightlifting and boxing lessons he becomes something of a monster seeking out opportunities to demonstrate his physical mastery at the expense of various bikers and low-lifes. He quickly goes from the underdog to the top dog and curiously it is this achievement that brings him closer to his father. In a theme that runs through the memoir AD recounts how his father’s father told him he wouldn’t amount to anything and in an unfortunate way he almost destined his son to the same treatment. In search of something other than drinking and fighting and working low end menial blue collar jobs AD gets away to college and later picks up writing miraculously getting his first short story published by Playboy. Meanwhile he begins to seek a relationship with his absent father. He recounts his father’s delight in his physical stature and bar fights, not really a father but like an admiring friend. Over time of course AD has matured into a highly regarded author publishing “The House Of Sand And Fog” and most recently “Last Days”. Although these literary accomplishments brought him much closer to his father he never was able to confront him and tell him the truly sordid conditions he and his siblings were left to deal with after he abandoned the family. As you may know, Dubus (the father) was badly injured in a car accident while attempting to help a young couple stopped by a highway who thought they had run over a motorcyclist – when he stopped to assist them he was run over by a driver and the impact left him an amputee bound to a wheel chair for the remainder of his life. Along with his other brother, AD rises to the occasion and built a rich bond until his untimely death in 1999 at the age of 63.
The memoir form is often criticized but it is life stories such as “Townie” that make a well told memoir better than any fiction.
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Aug 02, 2011 John Arfwedson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anyone who's loved the beautiful stories and essays of the late Andre Dubus, the father, should read this memoir by Andre Dubus III, his son.

Father and mother divorced when Andre III and his siblings were young and the book traces the more-or-less abandoned family's struggles to survive in the low-end working class world of an exhausted, broken-down Massachusetts mill town. The father does support the family financially, as best he can, but it's not enough. The mother works desperately hard but,...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Keri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a little difficult reading for me...it hit close to home. Single mother raising 4 kids in a violent neighborhood. Dubus takes us through his upbringing and what has to be done to survive. I did get a little sick of all the violence at one point and wondered when he was going to turn it all around. He gets there, it just takes a while. Amazing characterizations, gritty read. He doesn't pull any punches when remembering all the details of his life. I found myself relating to Dubus in so m...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Barbara A rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow. It's eight o' clock on the last night of June. The grand children are in bed, and this is when I usually open up my book and read for the evening. The problem is that I finished "Townie" last night, and now I am achingly homesick for Haverhill.

This is rather ridiculous, since (1) I have never been to Haverhill and (2) the town and the life that Dubus portrays, at great length and with much repetition, are as gritty, as violent, as unappealing as anyplace that one might imagine. This was hel...more

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