Laurie Lico Albanese

Author: Blue Suburbia

LAURIE LICO ALBANESEBlue SuburbiaPerennial (HarperCollins)

Some books exist primarily for plot, others for language. Laurie Lico Albanese defines the arc of Blue Suburbia: almost a memoir with free-verse vignettes. And its beauty rests entirely in her simple, pure, honest choice of words.

Albanese uses the qualifier "almost" in her subtitle to indicate that not every word in her memoir is fact. All of it, however, is true. She gathers license to apply the term "memoir" to her work from one of the main tenets of memoir writing: stick to the emotional truth of a story, regardless of actual names, dates and other documentarian details. She admits, for instance, in an interview with her publisher that the line about growing up "in the shadow of the jailhouse" isn't fact, but rather Emily Dickinson-inspired slant of truth. Albanese grew up behind a firehouse, and the county prison complex was across from the high school she attended. But her references to the jailhouse communicate far more than geography; they indicate the mental and emotional conditions of her home and surroundings.

In Blue Suburbia, Albanese stays close to home. Her almost-memoir focuses first on her family during her childhood—mainly her relationship with her parents—and moves through coming to terms with her childhood through the full-circle experience of being a parent herself. Rather than sentimentalizing either her childhood or her children, she gains understanding of her parents when faced with the act of parenting.

What makes Blue Suburbia unique is Albanese’s choice of format. On the inside, it looks like a collection of poetry. She places her free-verse poems in 12 thematic sections book-ended by a prologue and epilogue. The startling moments are not so much in what happens, but in how those happenings are worded. To love this book, you have to want to suck in her language, line breaks and rhythm.

Two poems in particular illustrate the difference between factual truth and emotional truth. In "I Wish," she comes upon her mother crying downstairs. She goes to comfort her, then writes, "wish I didn’t kneel beside her/ to ask what was wrong// wish I didn’t hear her say/ you—/ you’re what’s been/ wrong with my life/ for fourteen years.// What else is there/ to wish for?" In a later poem, "Mirror," she reflects upon the moment with her mother from an adult perspective and writes, "what really happened is this:" and describes the scene of going downstairs and her mother actually saying, "I'm so unhappy// her words flew to me—/ my mother, unhappy enough/ to be lying in the dark/ weeping in the middle of/ the afternoon// I'm so lonely//her words waver to me through time breaking like waves over rocks." As a child in the first poem, she interpreted her mother's unhappiness to be her fault; she takes on guilt and blame as children often do in the "everything’s my fault" manner. Only as an adult and as a parent can she see that her mother's depression has nothing to do with her at all.

Albanese illustrates this further in a poem where she slightly forgives her father for his downfall as a parent and can see him as human. In "Cinderella," she writes, "I say to him,/ Dad, it wasn’t your fault, no one/ could have made Mom happy// and for the most part/ I believe it’s true."

Many of the poems in Blue Suburbia are striking in their simplicity and in Albanese’s clear, direct language. Particularly poignant are the poems in the first half of the book, which set up her childhood, and toward the end, where she explores her own parenting. The sections "Losing My Way" and "Out of the Blue" go into her therapy and recovery, and don’t hit the mark quite as strongly. However, the remaining 12 sections are more than enough to make Blue Suburbia a worthy read. Albanese does go through the arc of a life swiftly, but because she doesn’t dwell on much, each moment is depicted with clarity. Even while wishing for more, these vignettes leave a lingering tingle.

Finally, while Blue Suburbia paints a typical suburban life complete with abusive parents, and Albanese struggles as a parent to decide if the typical American dream is desirable or depressing, she does offer a balance of hope with "Ordinary." She writes, "Is it dull/ to have an ordinary life/ or is it glorious?// I think it depends on the day/ and what you think is ordinary//[…]we call it ordinary/ even as stars/ spin inside us."