Requiem, Mass. by John Dufresne

I wish I knew how to describe John Dufresne's style, because it is my favorite kind of writing. It's fast and furious, and a little disjointed, sort of like a busy Saturday morning with lots of coffee. I devoured this book, both because I loved it, and because I felt like I had to read really fast to keep up.

Where I heard about this book: I found it on the library shelves. With a name like that, who could resist?

What I thought of this book: Terrific. 4 1/2 stars.

What this book is about: Wow. Hard to distill. It's told from the point of view of a middle-aged author, who originally writes the story as fiction, then is convinced to take the plunge, admit it's a memoir, and use real names, places and events. It follows his childhood in a wildly dysfunctional but entertaining extended family. This story is interspersed with segments of the protagonist's adult life. I must admit that I considered a few of these me-as-an-adult sections to be unwelcome distractions from the more compelling story of his childhood. My only other complaint about the novel is that there were so many characters that I had trouble keeping them all straight, particularly the family whose names are all colors. Otherwise this was a thoroughly enjoyable book.

I discovered that the main character in Requiem, Mass., Johnny, bears more than a passing resemblance to John Dufresne. I love the way the author talks, in interviews, about memoir and fiction. I'm paraphrasing here, but in essence he says that memoir is always half-truth, as memory is unreliable at best, and always biased. Fiction, he maintains, is in many respects more truthful; an author knows his characters better than he can ever know himself, and events are crisply imagined, not dulled by hazy recollection.

Here is an interview transcript I really enjoyed - John Dufresne sounds like someone who is easy to talk to; a serious writer who describes his profession in terms the rest of us can understand.