My Townie Heart

I chose this book because I grew up and went to school and worked between Brattleboro, VT and Amherst, MA, so the region in which the story took place was of interest. This book was a pretty easy and smooth read. Not something I would go out of my way to recommend or something that would make me search out this author's next book. I was sort of surprised when the main character started having so much anxiety shortly after half way through the book. The story really shifted there. The ending felt kinda whimpered out too. The Greek restaurant owner was my favorite character.

When Laura DiStefano finds her scholarship is suspended, she returns back to her small town that encloses her like a too tight skin. It is the 1970s and she has spent too much time doing drugs and nursing a heart broken by a more privalegded peer, it is no shock to her that her dream of escaping is slipping through her fingers. Her sister survived a brutal attack when she was a little girl and now seems to be on a track that is going to root her to a small life, the thing Laura herself fears. Afterall, she is smarter, meant for a better life- one that doesn't end in marriage, early motherhood and eventually a drunk resentful spouse which seems the only thing her blue collar town has on offer. Depressed by the news her sister is pregnant,won't name the father and keeps company with strange friends (the outcasts) she finds herself pitying her. Is it possible Laura, with all her superior intelligence and education can't see the people she loves clearly?
All Laura wants is a chance at a better life but finds herself drowning in the town's dysfunction, in own family at the heart of it. The horrific event that altered her little sister may not be finished and there may be a threat loomning. More than anything, Laura struggles with what is and what could be- possibly unable to translate the language in her own heart. Love is something that clouds her vision, she has seen too many women turn haggard and resentful when the frehsness of love and youth is worn down by lack of money and joy. More than anything she doesn't want to end up like her mother or the women in her town.
Things are spiraling and soon, her ambition has fled and she finds herself afraid to venture out, trapped by her own fears. This novel, more than anything, is an exploration of class and there are many truths that can't be denied. It is also the story of one woman's battle with her longing for the future while still tied to a family that could be holding her back. Or are they?

REVIEW: MY TOWNIE HEART by Diana Sperazza

Author D. H. Lawrence, early in the 20th century, famously quoted, in translation, the French proverb "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose": the more things change, the more they stay the same. Laura DiStefano must felt this too, when she flunked out of the University of Massachusetts and returned to stultifying dysfunction in her home town of Springfield. The first in her family to enter college, Laura had let herself be swamped by the drug culture, and bailed out. But remaining in the unloving bosom of her unlovely family is surely a fate worse than death. What choices remain?