Andre Dubus III is the son of the renowned short story writer Andre Dubus and Townie describes his long road to becoming a writer himself. This was no easy transition, and Townie is no ordinary tale of a young boy living in the shadow of his famous father.

Initially we do hear tales of the sort of bohemian childhood we would expect. Dubus describes how he and his brother and sisters would listen to parties going on downstairs where his parents and their friends would “dance and drink and argue and laugh…..I remember hearing a lot of dirty words then but also ones like story, novel and poem, Hemingway and Chekhov”. All this changes however when his father leaves the family to move in with a student he has fallen in love with. From this point on father and son’s lives diverge. Whilst his father remains in the world of the university and literature that they had all previously inhabited, Dubus’s mother is impoverished by the divorce and has to move the family to a series of low rent houses in low rent areas.

They soon slide into an underworld where their contemporaries “roamed the neighbourhood like dogs” and where a fight is never far away. As their mother struggles to make ends meet, the house descends into a chaos of unmade beds and unwashed dishes and becomes a magnet for young people who want to party and take drugs. Any semblance of a normal family life falls away and all of the children suffer.

This violent and sad world is very vividly described. Whilst Dubus’s brother attempts suicide as a way of removing himself from it, Dubus eventually turns to body building. The trigger for this is when his brother is viciously attacked, and as a small, weak boy he does nothing to stop this. In one of the central passages of the book he then describes how:

“I stood in front of the sink and the mirror. I was almost surprised to see someone standing there. This kid with a smooth face and not one whisker, this kid with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, this kid with narrow shoulders and soft arm and chest muscles and no balls. This kid had no balls. I looked into his eyes: I don’t care if you get your face beat in, I don’t care if you get kicked in the head or stabbed or even shot, I will never allow you not to fight back ever again. You hear me?
Ever. Not once, ever, again.”

There then follow many pages about Dubus’s remaking of himself. As a person with no interest in body building, I could have done without this section of the book and only wish it could have been made into a montage fight-movie style. No doubt in the planned film of the book, it will be.

Dubus is however interesting on violence itself and describes it fascinatingly and sickeningly vividly. Eventually in the second turning point of the book, Dubus turns away from violence – something that has become central to his way of life – and turns to writing instead as his way of relating to the world around him.

If violence is one central theme of the book, the other is most definitely the relationship between father and son and for me the more interesting. Dubus Senior seems to have had no idea of the life his children are leading and how very much it differs from his own on the leafy and safe campus. Whether this is genuine ignorance or denial is not made quite clear but there are some very affecting passages describing times when the children hide their poverty and ignorance from their father. Near the end of his father’s life, Dubus tells himself that he needs to explain his violent past to his father: “You need to tell him how it was. He still thinks this was just a sport for you. He’ll listen now. Tell him how it was.” Sadly, he never did do so and Townie was published some time after his father’s death.

Townie for me was not at all enjoyable to read but satisfying to finish. I felt as if I had glimpsed another, more violent world and seen how thin the line is between here and there. This then is not just a book about town versus gown but about something much more visceral – different ways of being a man and dealing with the cards life deals you. It could have done with some much tighter editing but as an exploration of violence and how poverty can impact on aspiration, it is definitely a worthwhile read.

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