Requiem, Mass.

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Requiem, Mass.: A Novel (eBook) Pub. Date: 7/17/2008 Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
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Requiem, Mass. Pub. Date: 7/28/2008 Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.

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Overview

John Dufresne takes us to Requiem, Mass., heart of the Commonwealth, where Johnny's mom, Frances, is driving in the breakdown lane once again. She thinks Johnny and his little sister Audrey have been replaced by aliens; she's sure of it, and she's pretty certain that she herself is already dead, or she wouldn't need to cover the stink of her rotting flesh with Jean Naté Après Bain. Dad, truck driver and pathological liar, is down South somewhere living his secret life. And Audrey, when she's not walking her cat Deluxe in a baby stroller, spends her time locked in a closet telling herself stories. Johnny, meanwhile, is hell-bent on saving the family from itself.

In his "truly original voice" (Miami Herald) and with the "miraculous beauty of his tale-telling" (New York Times Book Review), Dufresne brings his unparalleled eye for the tragic and the absurd to the dysfunctions and joys of family in this powerful new novel.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

In the latest from Dufresne (Love Warps the Mind a Little) novelist John's newest manuscript doesn't impress his girlfriend, Annick, who thinks "it doesn't breathe." So he goes back and rewrites it as a memoir: a book within a book. In it, Johnny and Audrey grow up in Requiem, Mass., with their unraveling mother, Frances, who believes her children were replaced by aliens and who bathes in gasoline. Their secretive truck driver father, Rainey, almost certainly has something odd going on down South. The book unfolds like a series of nesting dolls: John meanders around his coastal Florida home, writing his novel, visiting with friends and going on appointments for teaching jobs, while Johnny lives with his mother's worsening condition, his father's absences, his mother's hospitalization and a momentous trip South. Then there are stories within the memoir within the story, including the one a woman tells about her friend, Ginger Rae, who talks of writing a neighbor's suicide note, then claims it's part of a story she herself is writing. John is a very amusing unreliable narrator, and Dufresne's witty, sardonic take on life's fictions leaps off the page. (July)

Library Journal

Dufresne (Deep in the Shade of Paradise) here offers the childhood reminiscences of Johnny, who is trying to make sense of his traumatic upbringing in Requiem, MA. With a crazy mother who believes her children are imposters; a trucker father whose long, frequent absences have more to do with his secret second family than his delivery route; and a younger sister who likes to sit in closets, Johnny appears to be the only sane one in his family. He struggles none too successfully to instill his home life with some normalcy. As the adult Johnny writes this memoir and tries to make sense of his chaotic past, we get some of his more recent memories as well as a look into his present life. But the slew of other characters that Johnny recalls get tangled up with one another, as one memory triggers another until this reader frequently lost the thread of the main story. Be that as it may, Dufresne's voice is strong and witty, and while the digressions might seem at times extraneous, they are all funny and extremely well told. Recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ3/1/08.]
—Joy Humphrey

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Kirkus Reviews

Dufresne (Johnny Too Bad, 2005, etc.) travels to Requiem, Mass. The characters here are way beyond quirk-on a good day they might aspire to be wildly eccentric. The novel introduces us to a dysfunctional family (a redundant phrase in modern culture?) at whose center is "Mom," a woman who "[rolls] up her bologna into a tube and [eats] it like a cannoli, the ketchup dripping down her chin . . . " Her erratic gastronomic behavior is a symptom of her growing paranoia, which eventually becomes so bad she even denies the possibility that her children, Audrey and Johnny (the latter is the novel's narrator), can actually be hers (" ‘If they were my kids, I'd love them, wouldn't I?' "). Her increasingly bizarre deportment includes extinguishing her cigarettes in her mashed potatoes and looking around at her family and asking, " ‘Who are you people?' " Incredibly, the tone of all this is rather lighthearted, even frivolous at times. Rainy, Audrey and Johnny's father is a long-haul truck driver who cheerfully wills himself to stay away from home for weeks at a time-we soon find out that he has several other families cached away in various parts of the country. After being sent to a halfway house, Mom establishes a simulacrum of a "normal" life, at least insofar as she can with a bigamous husband and a couple of whacko children. Dufresne fills this novel with plenty of postmodern references; the writing itself is as much a subject as the oddball family.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393057904
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 7/28/2008
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 1,056,476
Product dimensions: 5.70 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

John Dufresne has written several books, including the novels Requiem, Mass. and Love Warps the Mind a Little (a New York Times Notable Book), and the fiction writing guides The Lie That Tells a Truth and Is Life Like This? He lives in Dania Beach, Florida.

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Sess-Jooner

Posted May 26, 2009

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Not his best.

This book was ok. That's as highly as I can speak of it. I respect it for what it was about. I couldn't finish this book because it was so predictable and boring, nothing was pushing me to keep reading through it. Definitly wasn't his best at all.
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jessie2

Posted January 31, 2009

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BEAUTIFULLY TRAGIC

This book was tragic and horrifying and hysterical all at the same time. The characters were all well drawn out, but your heart goes out to Johnny and Audrey. I particularly loved Deluxe the cat. Growing up is tough for Johnny but it is apparent he is a survivor. Audrey may or may not have a touch of her Mother in her. I loved this book but it scared me, as it reminded me of my childhood growing up in South Lake in Hollywood,Fl. and later Dania, my desperately insane Mother and my indifferent father.
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Anonymous

Posted August 7, 2008

Touching and emotional must-read

I saw this book in People magazine, and they had given it 4 stars so it seemed like a good risk to take. Based on the writer's real accounts, I found myself feeling the same emotions as he did, hoping that the story would have some kind of happy ending. From mental illness to pathological liars, John Dephresne paints a vivid picture of his childhood with a mentally ill mom and an absent and deceptive dad. I would definitely recommend this book. You won't want to put it down.
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