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Townie : a memoir  Cover Image Book Book

Townie : a memoir / Andre Dubus III.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9780393064667 (hbk.)
  • ISBN: 0393064662 (hbk.)
  • Physical Description: 387 p. ; 25 cm.
  • Edition: 1st ed.
  • Publisher: New York : W. W. Norton & Co., c2011.

Content descriptions

Summary, etc.:
After their parents divorce in the 1970's, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed, or killing someone else, or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds couldn't have been more stark or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself.
Subject: Dubus, Andre, 1959-
Authors, American > 20th century > Biography.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at GRPL.

Holds

0 current holds with 1 total copy.

Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Main 813.54 D854t (Text) 31307019277583 Non Fiction Available -

Electronic resources


Syndetic Solutions - BookList Review for ISBN Number 9780393064667
Townie : A Memoir
Townie : A Memoir
by Dubus 3rd, Andre
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BookList Review

Townie : A Memoir

Booklist


From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* Townie is a resolute story about the forging of a writer in fire and blood and a wrenching journey through the wreckage of New England's lost factory world during the Vietnam War era. But Dubus wasn't born into poverty, rage, and violence. His father, an ex-marine officer turned celebrated writer and adored college professor, initially settled his first family in the bucolic countryside. But the marriage failed, Pop moved out, and the four kids and their overwhelmed mother plunged into impoverished small-town hell. Dubus, a target for bullies, and his equally complex and resilient siblings were hungry, neglected, and imperiled within a storm of druggy nihilism and bloodlust. Dubus survived by lifting weights and learning to fight, but his unbridled aggression, even on the side of good, exacted a spiritual toll. Although their charismatic father was oblivious to his children's suffering, he was not unloving, and when an accident left him confined to a wheelchair, their support was profound. Dubus chronicles each traumatic incident and realization in stabbing detail. So chiseled are his dramatic memories, his shocking yet redemptive memoir of self-transformation feels like testimony under oath as well as hard-hammered therapy, coalescing, ultimately, in a generous, penetrating, and cathartic dissection of misery and fury, creativity and forgiveness, responsibility and compassion. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Oprah-pick Dubus will tour the country with this powerful memoir about his past and his renowned father, writer Andre Dubus.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

Syndetic Solutions - Publishers Weekly Review for ISBN Number 9780393064667
Townie : A Memoir
Townie : A Memoir
by Dubus 3rd, Andre
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Publishers Weekly Review

Townie : A Memoir

Publishers Weekly


(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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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