Townie, by Andre Debus III

I don’t self-identify with New Englanders having spent the majority of my life in New Jersey. And I was fortunate to have not grown up in a tough mill town in Massachusetts (my brother-in-law Dan did, who loaned me a copy of this book). Nevertheless, the beginning of Debus’ memoir is compelling and I was ready for his tale. The author’s narrative of a long, torturous Saturday run with his father is solid prose with a great tempo. I lost my feel for his story, however. I don’t know how much this is due to my lack of familiarity with Haverhill, Massachusetts or just to my discomfort with his narrative style. It feels like a sustained staccato burst of sequences from the author’s childhood, some inter-related, but oftentimes giving the feeling that much is missing as one who leaves the room in the middle of a movie and returns 20 minutes later – there is a familiarity, yet a sense that something important was missed. I stopped reading after about a quarter of the memoir. This is not reflection on the quality of writing; it just didn’t stick.