Townie

Just seeing their names next to each other on the shelf, you might think that Andre Dubus III stepped easily into the writer's shoes of his father and namesake, one of the great short-story writers of his time. Not in the least: Andre's dad wasn't around much, and he grew up partying and punching his way out of his Massachusetts mill town, only coming to writing late and very much on his own terms, leading to novels like The House of Sand and Fog and this tough and beautiful memoir, one of the best I've read about a creative person finding his consciousness, and a boy becoming a man.