Blue Suburbia: Almost a Memoir

As a younger woman i typically prefer books that hook you in within the first two pages--yes, i know i should give them more of a chance, but hey, the first impression is what always gets you. Owning many books that I just could NOT keep going past chapter ONE, this book was finally a breath of fresh air! Well, I took home this book, started reading, and couldn't stop until i read it all, finishing it in a few hours. This book is a look into more than just your stereotypical suburbia-- it is a look into a woman's past and the process of growing older, having time sneak up on you. The writing style of this book is phenominal! i loved it--it's not in paragraph form, yet not quite paragraph. It's like a mix between the two, and keeps you reading, instead of tedious paragraphs! verdict? an excellent buy.

I started reading Blue Suburbia in bed, late one night. I read until my eyes were burning. I picked the book up again the next morning and sat outside with my coffee, reading until I reached the last page. This book a marvelous break from same-old/same-old. The structure is unique and fresh. Albanese's judicious use of white space and line breaks forces the reader to pause and put emphasis in exactly the places she would have if she were speaking the words out loud. Her technique provides perfect timing. The tone of the book is deeply personal, confidential really. The author's presence is palpable. You are pulled into her reality, listening to her share her life experiences over a cup of coffee, then she looks up at you and says, "So you see now why I forgave her?"... "...Do you get the picture now?" Her feelings resonate on the page. I recognized some of the people in her world. The father who uses the belt to communicate and then, as an old man, edits his memories (an ex-husband's father). The cold, unhappy mother whose children would never be able to do the right thing, to make her happy (my friend's mother). And this (not using her spacing): " Some folks say in the land of opportunity that the starting line doesn't matter, but let me ask, what was expected of you at fifteen? How wide was your horizon? Where were you destined? Who set the course? What were you told to dream of? How far was too far to imagine? What joy was yours to attain?" I saw myself here. You can only appreciate how far you've come when you know where you started.

Laurie Lico Albanese has written a book of great beauty, which raises the quotidien and everyday to the level of great literature. In her final poem she asks, "Is anything ever truly ordinary?" and invites the reader to see their own lives in a new light. In her "almost-memoir" Albanese chronicles both the large and small events which shape her as a person, from her childhood in suburban working-class Long Island, to her initiation into sexuality, art, love and loss. Throughout, Lico has a brilliant eye for the telling detail, that make her poems breathe with life, even as she takes on the most compelling questions of existence. The reader's heart races along with Albanese as she experiences acute anxiety, crippling self doubt and crushing boredom. Her ability to experience life with such vivid force--from her overpowering love for her child, to her reignited passion for her husband, to her triumph as a writer--redeem her and reward the reader. That the arc of a life can be so well captured in a slim volume of free verse poetry, as accesible and haunting as a Bruce Springsteen album, is an incredible thing to behold.

I felt like Laurie Albanese was writing my story, and it's not one I've read before -- a look at growing up in blue-collar suburbia and the struggle, only sometimes successful, to get out. Her poem about riding to college with her parents is seared into my mind and heart forever. This is a memoir for every girl who grew up too smart for her family.

There are many books we've all read where the main character has endured many of the same things as are written about in Blue Suburbia. For some reason, however, that those same circumstances are written in free verse seems to make them slap a reader upside the head with the reality of it all. The language of Blue Suburbia is wonderfully sparse which, I think, emphasizes the actions...there are no flowery or minimizing adjectives or adverbs to take the sting out of the nouns and verbs. The word imageries linger long after closing the cover on Blue Suburbia.