The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 May 2012
by Andre Dubus III
There is a certain kind of tough town one finds in usually blue-collar suburban communities in times of economic stress. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, American industrial towns were very depressed. Poverty can bring out the worst in people. The old industrial towns around Boston suffered during those years. Along the Merrimack River that runs along the Massachussetts-New Hampshire border, there are many small industrial towns which held many abandoned old brick factory buildings (many of which, today, have been renovated and repurposed, but which sat vacant for decades). In earlier times, the town of Lowell, Massachusetts gave us Jack Kerouac. In this vivid memoir, Andre Dubus III gives us his recollection of a youth spent in several Merrimack towns, but mostly Haverhill and Bradford. Dubus is the author of House of Sand and Fog and is the son of the late Andre Dubus, noted author of short stories and novellas, with whom he is often confused. The elder Dubus came from Cajun Louisiana. He brought his young family with him as he moved north, pursuing his writing and teaching career. The family settled in small towns and, eventually, in Haverhill, while the elder Dubus taught at now-defunct Bradford College. It was there, though, that Dubus and his wife divorced, leaving the kids, including young Andre, living in straitened economic times, the late 60s and early 70s. The family left behind were close to poor, living in run-down neighborhoods in which elder tough kids terrorized the four children new on the block. Young Andre, tired of the abuse from kids taking out their own frustrations and abuse out on younger weaker kids, eventually vows to build his own strength so he could defend his family, to fight back. What ensues is is a long and often painful relation of Dubus's fights, his urge to express his own frustrations with his abandonment, and the occasional interactions with a distant and notable father (who rubbed elbows with such writers as Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike). Young Dubus's memoir is potent (and to this reader, who is a contemporary and from the same region, deeply familiar). The times and the places are powerfully described. Dubus's journey is often difficult reading, but, as he comes to writing, begins to examine his life and to change his approach to its frustrations. His relationship with his father evolves and shifts after his father's near-fatal accident. His life opens up and expands beyond the confining and violent streets of his home town. And that town, too, experiences better economic times. It is too easy to say that Andre Dubus followed in his father's footsteps. But his writing is certainly informed by his father's (read the senior Dubus's story The Winter Father and see startling links to the young Dubus's life). The memoir is grim, but riveting. Dubus captures a whole era in its pages. It is a commonplace to say that a writer is saved by his writing, but, in this case, it seems entirely true. There are a few hollow-sounding moments here, but overall, a compelling and very real-feeling book. Recommended.
See Also: [In the Bedroom by Andre Dubus]