Apr 29

Apr 29 As You Were

Author: David Tromblay
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

A hypnotic, brutal, and unstoppable coming-of-age story from within the aftershocks set off by the American Indian boarding schools, fanned by the flames of nearly fifteen years of service in the Armed Forces, exposing a series of inescapable prisons and the invisible scars of attempted erasure.

When he learns his father is dying, David Tromblay ponders what will become of the monster’s legacy and picks up a pen to set the story straight.

In sharp and unflinching prose, he recounts his childhood bouncing between his father, who wrestles with anger, alcoholism, and a traumatic brain injury; his grandmother, who survived Indian boarding schools but mistook the corporal punishment she endured for proper child-rearing; and his mother, a part-time waitress, dancer, and locksmith, who hides from David’s father in church basements and the folded-down back seat of her car until winter forces her to abandon her son on his grandmother’s doorstep.

For twelve years, he is beaten, burned, humiliated, locked in closets, lied to, molested, seen and not heard, until his talent for brutal violence meets and exceeds his father’s, granting him an escape.

Years later, David confronts the compounded traumas of his childhood, searching for the domino that fell and forced his family into the cycle of brutality and denial of their own identity.

TL;DR Review

As You Were is a well written but extremely dark, heavy memoir. I recommend reading it across a long stretch of time.

For you if: You want to immerse yourself in more people’s life stories, even when they are hard to read.

Full Review

First, thank you to Dzanc Books for sending a copy of this memoir my way. It took me a few months to get to it because I knew that I was going to need to be in a certain emotional place to process it. David Tromblay’s memoir describes, in short vignettes of memory, his absolutely brutal, painful life — from extreme, violent child abuse to his time in the Iraq war to suffering from severe PTSD.

“Enjoyable” is not a word I would use to describe reading a book like this. It was hard. But Tromblay writes in a way that holds your gaze steady. I think the choice to split the memories into short chapters and bounce around a bit in time was helpful, because it propels you through the narration. And Tromblay’s voice, while never sugar coating anything (in fact he throws quite a few punches our way), still manages to carry you with a measure of care. I also appreciated the way he weaved in his disconnect with his Indigenous ancestry while showing how his father wielded it as a sort of weapon-shield.

But — it was a hard read. I can only imagine how difficult and painful it must have been to write a book like this. For that alone, I can’t help but praise it. And if he could write it, we can read it. My suggestion would just be to break this book up into very small pieces and read it over a long stretch of time, because otherwise, it could quickly overwhelm.