Despite this, his parents fostered in him a strong love of books, and when he applied to a local boarding school to be away from his family, his study continued. Fitzgerald uses precise word choice throughout his work to communicate 'just enough that you know it wasn't nice.' The subjects covered include his childhood in the Roman Catholic Church and living in a former mill town in central Massachusetts, where he had to put up with his violent father and his maniacal mother. Faithful to his background, he generously sprinkles comedy, pleasure, anguish, sadness, grace, and insight across the 12 pieces in Dirtbag, Massachusetts.

He was 'surrounded by stories of the greatest comedy and the darkest sadness, by the sounds of pealing laughter and enduring stillness' in the soup kitchen he frequently visited. In Boston's South End, Fitzgerald began a wild life in low-income housing. The many readers this book deserves will be grateful that he's still alive since he's decided to write about these events in such a transparent and sympathetic way. Fitzgerald's life has been filled with terrifying experiences, from his 'loud, dark boyhood' in an abusive family to his introduction to drinking, drugs, and petty larceny at the age of 12, to the time he rode a motorbike 'black-out drunk' 70 miles from Santa Cruz to San Francisco. Yet one of its most remarkable features is that its author lived through some of the incidents he writes about for long enough to write about them. They first meet at divinity school, which is a pretty peculiar place to begin an affair.ĭirtbag Massachusetts's is Isaac Fitzgerald's wonderful memoir-in-essays, is full of marvels. My parents were married when they had me, but to separate people, which is how he begins his story, showing his captivating storytelling skill and utilization of pleasant surprises. Dirtbag Massachusetts's: The book's title, A Confessional, quickly catches the reader's interest and doesn't let go.

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