This Boy's Life: A Memoir

This book is very teachable and interesting to read. I was able to use this as a fulcrum text for our coming off age unit for sophomores in high schoolvery successfully. It was an easy read and very engaging.

Scavenging for nits on someone's scalp. That's what I see from this man Dwight as he points out and makes up faults of this young Toby (Jack). Dwight wants to marry Toby's mother. In the meantime, she has him living with Dwight while she makes up her mind as to whether she wants to marry him. Toby, for some reason, lies to her when she asks how it's going (with Dwight). He's treated as a house slave. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yeah, you know, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes there isn't even any turkey. You could try to be honest and keep your nose clean, but it doesn't guarantee anything. A screwed-up kid who lies, cheats, forges documents, drinks, and steals, not to mention damaging property, gets kicked out of schools, but winds up with a degree from Oxford, a nationally-famous writer and professor at one of the best universities. He writes clear, strong prose that stays with you for a long time. Read this book or "In Pharaoh's Army" or some of his short stories. This is the story of his teenage years, mostly in Washington state, in a town called Concrete. An absent father, a Pollyannaish mother, and an abusive stepfather all created a kind of hell on earth for Tobias Wolff. But when you're that age, you're not sure. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. This is a book that doesn't excuse himself, it's just all there in black and white. You could see the (1993) movie too, with Leonardo di Caprio in the title role, and with Robert de Niro as the abusive stepfather. Ellen Barkin is lovely as the mother. But the book is far richer. Tobias never got to even compete in that turkey shoot way back then, but I reckon he got the prize in Life. It's definitely an American classic along with his book on Vietnam.

Tobias Wolff’s personal life was not a subject of his stories until ten years into his career. He had been known for stunning short fiction published in journals that made their way to collections, alongside two other short novels. Entering it’s thirty-year anniversary, it was his first memoir This Boy's Life that catapulted his popularity among a broader audience. This Boy's Life is a well-crafted, approachable creative nonfiction examination of a young man’s attempt to solidify a protean identity as he travels the United States with his mother who pings off a variety of unsuitable suitors at each stop. The result is a beautiful manifesto of the faceless and nameless uncertainty of youth.

Tobias – or as he preferred Jack, after Jack London – is a child whose personality, goals, and desires seem to change with the tides of his circumstances. His life was at the whim of his mother, and they constantly changed addresses in order to flee from the of unsavory schemes and behaviors of his mother's love interest of the week. Tobias has a clear desire for his mother to finally find happiness, but in the search for it, his own desire to have some kind of control over his life is undermined by his mother's methodology in searching for this happiness. Her relationships seem to have the best intentions - she wants to have someone to love and for her son to have a father. Tobias, however, needed a sense of routine, normalcy, and something to depend on. Unfortunately for this small family, these two desires are mutually exclusive and never seem to reconcile with one another.

Tobias' search for his own identity and to have control over his life comes at the cost of his character being something concrete. The audience sees the most change in the constantly morphing, ingenuine nature of his character – he is constantly in flux due to a variety of ever-changing external forces. When he attends confession and finds it inappropriate that he has nothing to confess, for instance, he simply parrots what a nun told him she had confessed about when she was younger. When he wasn't allowed to drive because he was never taught the skill by his stepfather, he simply took the car late at night while everyone was sleeping and drove it a hundred miles an hour down a street near their house. When he was caught writing a curse in the boys bathroom at school after being thrown under the bus by his peers, he simply lied until everyone believed him – including his mother, and eventually believed it himself.

In many ways, Tobias' story is about youth mired in performance art and dishonesty. Wolff's dishonesty with himself and with the world as a young man is not the kind that suggests he is lying, but rather, the testing and construction of the version of himself that is the most like the version he expects himself to be. Wolff directly reflects on his own disingenuousness in the later half of the book, noting he "was giving up being realistic, as people liked to say, meaning the same thing...being realistic made me feel bitter...a new feeling, and one I didn't like, but I saw no way out" (209). He follows his self-assessment with a series of unapologetically forged letters of recommendation to an exclusive prep school, writing "without heat or hyperbole, in the words my teachers would have used had they known me as I knew myself... (a) splendid phantom who carried all my hopes" (214). It is in this character, a changing protean character of invention who is never defined and never satiated by the end of the book, where Wolff's biggest achievement is apparent.

What is perhaps most fascinating is Wolff's ability to challenge the idea that youth is some mapped construct that lays out a predictable road before us. What is more likely is that we grasp at a variety of identities throughout our lives until we arrive at an approximation of who we are – a melange of our reactions, experiences, and tested boundaries. As the memoir closes and Tobias is entering early adulthood, he observes "when we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters...that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever...(but it only) burns bright at certain moments" (286). Wolff's character, heavily influenced by his mother's own struggles and wanderings, tells the elemental truth of our own uncertainties that we all must all accept at one point or another. The book opens with a stark reminder of the incomprehensibility of existence itself: a violent truck accident followed by Tobias' mother patting him and buying him a souvenir at a store as they drive cross-country away from Tobias' father. By the end it is apparent that, like Tobias, we all may be shimmying as wildly and breaklessly as the truck, careening uncertainly toward whatever comes next. It is our job to do our best to stay on the road.

A terrifically engaging account of growing up in the 1950s. Reading this story put me in mind of my own youth 20 years after "Jack" Wolff's adolescent journey. This is the story of everyboy or everyman - at least those who grew up before about 1980, after which things became so technical and a million and one diversions conspired to entice a lad away from life's early tests: shady friends bound for an early death or life behind bars, experimentation with booze and cigarettes and sex, and the seemingly inevitable fact that, if one didn't end up dead or in jail, one was bound for the military.

If Wolff's turbulent adolescence reminds us of our own, then we're left to marvel at the fact that we didn't all wind up dead before the age of 20, given all the ways that peers, parents and strangers can so completely conspire to screw us up. I've reached an age where my child raising is done and I look back now to compare my effort against that of my parents and, while I was for a time smug in my feeling that I'd done better, I realize, sadly, that there is no perfect parent and that each time I may have avoided making the same mistake my parents had made, I made two or three original mistakes for which I now am regretful. In this light, one is not simply sympathetic to Jack - because we've all been young, impetuous, snotty and inwardly scared - but also sympathetic to his mother and even sympathetic to his hideously flawed stepfather.

"We hated each other. We hated each other so much that other feelings didn't get enough light. It disfigured me. When I think of Chinook I have to search for the faces of my friends, their voices, the rooms where I was made welcome. But I can always see Dwight's face and hear his voice. I hear his voice in my own when I speak to my children in anger." Pg. 232.

Read this book if you're a parent, have been a parent or aspire to be a parent. Read this book if you pine for an earlier day when, as a youngster, you left your home early in the day and roamed freely through a small town, only to return in time for supper at the coming of nightfall. Read this book if you remember a bit of the thug in your adolescent self or in the people with whom you associated growing up. There seems to be something of all of us in this story.

This memoir is highly rated and considered a classic, and I guess it is for the time it was written and because it is about troubled adolescence. Toby/Jack is in a depressing situation along with his mother, both of whom look for ways to start fresh to find success but fail repeatedly - Jack because he has grand ideas about his potential but prefers to lie, cheat and steal. I felt sorry for his mother and the people who tried to help him. He is a lost, conniving boy always hoping he will do better next time. The writing is good, though, and the author does not hold back. Despite Jack's shortcomings and difficult life situation, I kept wishing he would finally straighten up and do well - the ending leaves that uncertain.

We are a community college reading class and we’ve just finished reading This Boy’s Life. Here are our thoughts:

Things we liked:
• Interesting story that moved at the right pace – didn’t drag
• Engaging and relatable; Eye opening
• Descriptive writing – realistic with lots of imagery
• Fairly easy to read in terms of vocabulary and writing style

Things we didn’t like:
• No “Wow” factor – flat mood throughout; not dynamic so some of us lost interest in the end
• Abrupt ending
• Strongly disliked nearly all of the men

Very engaging memoir from the first page onwards. Mr. Wolff has a natural ability to write engagingly in a relaxed way. His book spans about the first 17 years of his life prior to his joining the U.S. Army and heading to Vietnam (see In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War)

It's hard not to come to like Mr. Wolff and his mom as you read. Always on the move, he and his mom finally settle in a small town called Concrete, Montana. Mom has moved in with Dwight who, for no apparent reason, despises Mr. Wolff. Dwight sets out to make Wolff's life hell and, for the most part succeeds.

Wolff's writing has a kind of relaxed feel to it as he relays events. He relays his memories to us in such a way that it's all believable. I never found myself thinking anything was overblown. A lot of what was written related to me personally. The single mother, over bearing, unrelated father figure and the alcohol. I found myself nodding at some of the antics of those involved.

Based on this writing, I'll pursue more of Mr. Wolff's work as I feel he has a natural ability to engage me. In summary, "This boy's life" is a fascinating look at a young man coming of age in the 50's. It's well written and moves along at, for me, a perfect pace. Well worth my time.

Wolff, Tobias. This Boy's Life.

After watching a truck plunge over a cliff, Tobias Wolff begins the story of his boyhood: `It was 1955 and we were driving from Florida to Utah, to get away from a man my mother was afraid of and to get rich on uranium.' The memoir is replete with such unfulfilled promises of happiness and riches, for this boy's life is far from happy and successful. In fact, although `people in Utah were getting up poor in the morning and going to bed rich at night,' sleeping rough, going to poor schools, and suffering a thousand humiliations is to be the lot of Toby, self-christened Jack, after Jack London.

Jack's major problem, however, is being terrorised by the psychopath Dwight, the `man my mother was afraid of.' Already a scoundrel, given to theft, window-breaking and taking pot-shots at people in the street, Jack is obviously in need of paternal discipline. This is provided - and how! - by his mother's latest suitor, Dwight, a divorcee with three children. Dwight emerges as a humourless control freak.

Living with Dwight and family in Chinook, a town without a school is `A Whole New Deal.' The first instalment of this is Dwight's confiscation of Jack's Winchester rifle; the next is finding him a paper round, and the most arduous having him shuck horse chestnuts every night, the promised remuneration from papers and nuts ending up in his guardian's pocket. The Winchester too now, in effect, belongs to Dwight, a boaster who can't shoot for toffee.

Eventually, by fair means and foul, Jack manages to escape from the dreary school at Concrete by winning a scholarship to Hill, a private school, into which he is initiated by being measured for a wardrobe of uniforms. It begins to look like an upbeat ending for the scapegrace hero, but being Jack it isn't to be. Conformity and a settled life are not for him.

What I liked about Jack's story is the calm unemotional tone maintained as he and his mother constantly move from one disaster to another, from Florida to Utah to Seattle, ending up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. My only cavil is with the ending, in my opinion just a couple of pages too long. I'd have preferred it to end with the reunion of mother and son in Washington DC, when she takes him `to a piano bar full of men in Nehru jackets where she let me drink myself under the table. She wanted me to know that I'd lasted longer than she ever thought I would.' All Jack needs in life is his mother's approval. As for her, `she was in a mood to celebrate, having just landed a good job in a church across the street from the White House. "I've got a better view than Kennedy," she told me.'

Leaving Sarasota, Florida, in a run-down Nash Rambler in 1955, Toby Wolff, then ten, and his mother are looking forward to a new life in Utah. Not long after arriving, however, the two make a sudden, night-time departure for newer pastures in Seattle--the mother's abusive relationship in Utah having become intolerable. Later Toby and his mother gravitate to Chinook, a remote village in the Cascades. His mother marries a tough man who cruelly punishes Toby (who has changed his name to Jack in honor of Jack London) for infractions, sells some of Toby's treasured belongings, and tries to impose military discipline on him.

Wolff's story of his grim life from age ten through high school is a breath-taking recreation, filled with the sorts of longings that motivate sensitive young boys everywhere, but also filled with an a self-awareness that is rare in such autobiographies. Jack (Toby) is a rebel--a sometime kleptomaniac, thief, cheater, liar, and schoolboy miscreant who loves his mother, hates his stepfather (and generally tries to avoid him), and hangs out with similarly alienated, hell-raising schoolmates, who often "escape" through alcohol.

When his brother (who remained with his father), encourages Jack to apply as a scholarship student to an eastern boarding school, thereby escaping his stepfather, he is intrigued with the idea, though he has had few academic interests until then. The story of how Wolff manages to attend a prep school is a classic. (The fictionalized story of his boarding school life appears in his recent novel, Old School.)

Throughout this self-examination, hilariously funny in many places and remarkably astute, Jack sees himself as the "Jack" he invents to suit circumstances, while simultaneously revealing himself as he really is, the hidden "Jack." Like many his age, he often takes the easy way out, and he recognizes this, too. As he grapples with perennial issues of growing up, needing to be accepted, learning what is "right," and changing his behavior to meet the differing expectations of peers and family, he comes to new understandings about himself and his place in the world. One of the best and most honest coming-of-age stories ever written, This Boy's Life is a modern classic. Mary Whipple

This is a beautiful cinematic memoir of a young boy's struggle to get out into the world in one piece.
Sound familiar? Yes, this book will speak to you. I imagine it will speak to anyone who's felt out of place,
alone, like his mother was acting crazy or erratic, and never vigilant enough, and her new date is a cause for your suffering and abuse, and the distant father is glorified in the imagination. I certainly related.

A classic.

forever,
Annie

Annie Lanzillotto
author of "L is for Lion: an italian bronx butch freedom memoir" SUNY Press
and "Schistsong" BORDIGHERA Press

www.annielanzillotto.com

L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (SUNY series in Italian/American Culture)
Schistsong (Via Folios)
Blue Pill
Carry My Coffee (Live)
Eleven Recitations

asserts Tobias "Toby" Wolff in this "memoir of boyhood." His claim applies in so many ways to the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of his abusive, controlling stepfather. Wolff's story begins in 1955 with the ten-year-old traveling westbound on a cross country trip with his mother "from Florida to Utah to get away from a man my mother was afraid of and to get rich on uranium." While his older brother Geoffrey (who also wrote a memoir about his childhood) remained in the custody of his wealthy dad, of whom he writes (p 122), "As a boy, I found no fault with my father...," Toby lived with his mother, who made a habit of choosing the wrong kind of men with which to engage in relationships. After leaving California, mother and son lived for a time in Concrete, Washington. They then moved ever further out in the boondocks to live with his stepfather, Dwight, the bane of Toby's existence. The man's bad behavior, especially towards the boy but also his mother, make up a decent part of the memoir.

The author admits he wasn't the best behaved kid, (p 133), "I was a liar...I was also a thief," and had some pretty serious worries, (p 11), "I was subject to fits of feeling myself unworthy, somehow deeply at fault." All grown up, he provides excellent insight into his former life, (p 286) "When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever." Somehow, he survives. His story ends with him heading off to a college he seems less than qualified to attend. Fortunately for readers, in This Boy's Life, he provides a brutally honest account of his upbringing. Also good: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Even Silence Has an End by Ingrid Betancourt and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

"This Boy's Life" is a fairly nondescript memior. Tobias Wolff was neither a child of privilege, nor a coming of story that follows a rocket to fame. Describing the book this way is not to suggest that it is not a good read. One may launch criticisms against the character, but it is difficult to do so against the story itself.

Tobias (Jack) seem to spend much of the book on the move. Though the his mother's beau Dwight is the next most stable character, he also becomes a source of much of the conflict. Readers will often find themselves wishing Tobias would be more assertive and stand up for himself. Whether its is the quarrels with his step-father Dwight or the "sissy" Arthur, the lack of self-assertiveness can be maddening. Much of Tobias's conflict stems from his mother's instability. After divorcing his father, Tobias's mother drifts from locations and relationships. In itself, this unhealthy lifestyle is a source of Tobias's conflicts.

The chronology of the book begins at middle school age and continues to an undetermined time in high school. Tobias does find his share of adolescent mischief throughout the book. Among the incidents, nothing really goes over the top.

"This Boy's Life" is not a profound read, but it is an entertaining slice of adolescence. A lot of what is included is what boys still experience at that age. The fast paced nature lends itself to being able to read the book in only a few sittings.

This is a very serious and entertaining autobiographical account of Tobias Wolff's early years.
He was greatly attached to his mother and managed to survive (with zest and resilience!!)
despite a cruel stepfather and some bizarre experiences. He appears to have had a strange
and determined tenacity of vision and an ability to mold fantasy into reality. The only reality
he was powerless to mold was an absent father and frequent uprootings.

"I imagined being adopted by different people I saw on the street. Sometimes, seeing a man
in a suit come towards me from a distance that blurred his features, I would prepare myself
to recognize my father and to be recognized by him. Then we would pass each other and a
few minutes later I would pick someone else. I talked to anyone who would talk back. When
the need came upon me, I knocked on the door of the nearest house and asked to use the
bathroom. No one ever refused. I sat in other people's yards and played with their dogs.
The dogs got to know me - - by the end of the year they'd be waiting for me." (P. 12-13)

Due to his intelligence, Mr. Wolff gets admitted into a prep school where he feels like a
failure. "I did not do well at Hill. How could I? I knew nothing. My ignorance was so pro-
found that entire class periods would pass without my understanding anything that was
said." (P 285). Mr. Wolff starts acting out oppositionally, preparing to become a juvenile
delinquent. He is well on that road when the book ends. The book leads the reader to
speculate how the mature Tobias Wolff emerged from this punk/hoodlum. Where did the
transition come into play? Perhaps this information is provided in the sequel which I
look forward to reading.

Leaving Sarasota, Florida, in a run-down Nash Rambler in 1955, Toby Wolff, then ten, and his mother are looking forward to a new life in Utah. Not long after arriving, however, the two make a sudden, night-time departure for newer pastures in Seattle--the mother's abusive relationship in Utah having become intolerable. Later Toby and his mother gravitate to Chinook, a remote village in the Cascades. His mother marries a tough man who cruelly punishes Toby (who has changed his name to Jack in honor of Jack London) for infractions, sells some of Toby's treasured belongings, and tries to impose military discipline on him.

Wolff's story of his grim life from age ten through high school is a breath-taking recreation, filled with the sorts of longings that motivate sensitive young boys everywhere, but also filled with an a self-awareness that is rare in such autobiographies. Jack (Toby) is a rebel--a sometime kleptomaniac, thief, cheater, liar, and schoolboy miscreant who loves his mother, hates his stepfather (and generally tries to avoid him), and hangs out with similarly alienated, hell-raising schoolmates, who often "escape" through alcohol.

When his brother (who remained with his father), encourages Jack to apply as a scholarship student to an eastern boarding school, thereby escaping his stepfather, he is intrigued with the idea, though he has had few academic interests until then. The story of how Wolff manages to attend a prep school is a classic. (The fictionalized story of his boarding school life appears in his recent novel, Old School.)

Throughout this self-examination, hilariously funny in many places and remarkably astute, Jack sees himself as the "Jack" he invents to suit circumstances, while simultaneously revealing himself as he really is, the hidden "Jack." Like many his age, he often takes the easy way out, and he recognizes this, too. As he grapples with perennial issues of growing up, needing to be accepted, learning what is "right," and changing his behavior to meet the differing expectations of peers and family, he comes to new understandings about himself and his place in the world. One of the best and most honest coming-of-age stories ever written, This Boy's Life is a modern classic. Mary Whipple

Leaving Sarasota, Florida, in a run-down Nash Rambler in 1955, Toby Wolff, then ten, and his mother are looking forward to a new life in Utah. Not long after arriving, however, the two make a sudden, night-time departure for newer pastures in Seattle--the mother's abusive relationship in Utah having become intolerable. Later Toby and his mother gravitate to Chinook, a remote village in the Cascades. His mother marries a tough man who cruelly punishes Toby (who has changed his name to Jack in honor of Jack London) for infractions, sells some of Toby's treasured belongings, and tries to impose military discipline on him.

Wolff's story of his grim life from age ten through high school is a breath-taking recreation, filled with the sorts of longings that motivate sensitive young boys everywhere, but also filled with an a self-awareness that is rare in such autobiographies. Jack (Toby) is a rebel--a sometime kleptomaniac, thief, cheater, liar, and schoolboy miscreant who loves his mother, hates his stepfather (and generally tries to avoid him), and hangs out with similarly alienated, hell-raising schoolmates, who often "escape" through alcohol.

When his brother (who remained with his father), encourages Jack to apply as a scholarship student to an eastern boarding school, thereby escaping his stepfather, he is intrigued with the idea, though he has had few academic interests until then. The story of how Wolff manages to attend a prep school is a classic. (The fictionalized story of his boarding school life appears in his recent novel, Old School.)

Throughout this self-examination, hilariously funny in many places and remarkably astute, Jack sees himself as the "Jack" he invents to suit circumstances, while simultaneously revealing himself as he really is, the hidden "Jack." Like many his age, he often takes the easy way out, and he recognizes this, too. As he grapples with perennial issues of growing up, needing to be accepted, learning what is "right," and changing his behavior to meet the differing expectations of peers and family, he comes to new understandings about himself and his place in the world. One of the best and most honest coming-of-age stories ever written, This Boy's Life is a modern classic. Mary Whipple

A unadorned and candid memoir of the childhood, similar style to that of Hemingway. What could have been a wrenching story full of emotions is actually a very calm observation of his surroundings and his actions to survive and to find whatever happiness and connections to the violent world around him.

A solid memoir that delves deeper than the movie. Crisp writing with solid moments of introspection and literary grace. The book seems to illustrate more than just a boy trying to escape an abusive stepfather, as Wolff injects deep social commentary and tasteful humor at just the perfect opportunities. At times you love Wolff for his compassion toward his mother and intelligence to escape, then feeling slightly annoyed by him through a certain amount of arrogance and naivete. Nevertheless, his ability to write a sentence is page turning to say the least, and his ability to paint his own picture with originality is quite impressive. His descriptors and tone were flawless. In the end, a worthwhile read. Wolff is a talented American original.

I originally purchased this memoir hoping that I could recommend it to my male high school students. There are not a lot of books that appeal to them. I appreciated the writing style very much - his prose is complex and haunting. I think that what the work is lacking is a series of DRAMATIC events. When someone reads a work, they want these huge things to happen. Wolff nicely illuminates how it's the frequent "little" things that lead to our real problems. I understood this completely while I was reading it and I felt the narrative was understaed in a dark and interesting way. However, because the plot lacks these big events, I don't know if my high school aged boys will fully embrace it the same way they embrace "The Basketball Diaries", for example. That being said, this is better written than "The Basketball Diaries".

This book proved a superb read. In all seriousness, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I do so because, beyond his instinctive narrative style that both captivates and delights, Wolff substantiates the hard and fast rule in life that no matter how difficult of a childhood, one can always improve upon oneself.

Wolff is currently a professor at Stanford (unless things have changed without my knowledge), earned his B.A. at Oxford and received his M.S. at Stanford as well. This is incredible considering the childhood he laid out in This Boy's Life. Wolff was not a good little boy, to say the least. He was guilty of lying, stealing, cursing, fighting, forgery, and being rather unattached to anything or anyone but his mother. He spent several years with an abusive stepfather who, while never out-and-out beating him, put him through psychological trauma just as severe. It's amazing this man has become one of America's greatest writers, but I suppose all great talent was forged in blazing fires.

Wolff does not mince words and, while not a simple read, his memoir it moves very quickly. He did a masterful job of pacing the narrative so as to make things suspenseful without any truly dramatic plot twists. After all, this is his real life. Real life is something that happens, not something that follows a plot line. Wolff takes his real life and weaves it into a fascinating tale that I couldn't put down.

~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant

I remember being extremely impressed with the film adaptation of "This Boy's Life", and so I couldn't resist a secondhand copy at my local thrift store. Surprisingly, the film is actually somewhat better than the book. But Wolff's prose is very good and the story of his childhood is quite absorbing.

Now about his childhood, the film adaptation makes much more of his stepfather-from-hell (portrayed by Robert DeNiro). However in the book he is viewed somewhat as a bullying simpleton rather than a brutal monster. It seems the author's rotten childhood is as much due to his under-achieving attitude as it is to his repressive stepfather. This makes the story a bit less dramatic but of course more realistic.

Bottom line: it's always interesting to read a book about someone else's tortured childhood, especially when it is written so well. Recommended.

In this memoir, author Tobias Wolff tells his story of growing up in the 1950s. He begins at age 10, five years after the breakup of his parents' marriage, when he and his mother are heading West to escape from one of her boyfriends and to start a new life. From this point on, the book details their struggles, which revolve around two main (and clearly related) themes: their financial difficulties and the conflicts which arise with the various men who appear in their lives.
The majority of the book centers around a period when Tobias (or Jack, as he was known then) and his mother live with Dwight, a man his mother married in an attempt to keep Jack out of trouble. To some extent, Wolff attempts to portray Dwight as all-bad, but like all people, Dwight is simply flawed. His positive efforts to help Jack are often wiped out by his subsequent negative behavior--e.g., he helps Jack get a paper route but then spends Jack's money without his knowledge, he encourages Jack to become a Boy Scout but won't complete the paperwork to allow him to become an Eagle Scout, etc. Jack's family life was dysfunctional well before the term ever existed.
I read this book after seeing a reference to it in another memoir, Alice Sebold's Lucky. Like Sebold, Wolff tells his own story with a largely dispassionate voice and very simple language, both of which dilute the impact of his words somewhat. His emotions more clearly shine through when he mentions what his past brought to his current life, but unfortunately, he does not do this very often. Furthermore, Wolff gives the reader only a small glimpse of what the future holds in store for Jack, which I found to be frustrating. Overall, this was a compelling memoir, but it left me wanting more than what Wolff offered.

Rather than reproduce the entire book in this review, I just want to say, briefly, that it's not easy to feel a lot of sympathy for Toby Wolff as a boy because he sabotages your empathy with his crazy behavior. But he's a real person. You feel his emotions, his predicaments, and his frustrations. That's because the writing here is so clear and direct. And as a result, you carry on, sadly knowing how trapped he is in his childhood, his powerlessness. I'm glad I read this book, but I'm not sure why. I think it's because it validates our spirit of survival, and verifies the utter stupidity of some parents toward their children. I recommend it to anyone who has had rough sailing while growing up, which is probably the entire human race.

This is not your All American idyll. No, young Wolff is not the barefoot boy with cheek. It seems his life would be everything he could desire if only he weren't drawn to the wrong sort of peers and if only his mother avoided abusive men. After a few pranks such as drawing a bead with a 22 rifle on passers by, and pelting with eggs a well-to-do man in his new Thunderbird Convertible it almost seems like just desserts for Wolff and his mother to be swept away to an isolated company town in the Cascade Range of Washington State with the nefarious Dwight the dim-wit.
But whoa, the new man in their life is a monster who eventually is banished from their lives by court order. Halleleuh! But for two or more indelible years, this is the sort of stepfather who makes young Wolff deliver newspapers for the brief years of their association, claiming to be saving the funds for the boy but instead spends the money on fancy hunting rifles for great horseback hunts which never happen. A drunkard and a master of brow beatings, the one redeeming factor dull Dwight brings into Wolfe's life is an association with the Boy Scouts and indeed Wolff credits his scouting days with his later decision to join the army.
As presumably a real life memoir, the writing is excellent. It does however beg the question; what is craft without purpose? The strength of This Boy's Life is the candor and comfort with Wolff recounts his struggles. Hurray then for candor, hurray for the anti-hero but please Turn on the Lights! Must this hero live in darkness? Give him purpose, direction, and discipline. Most of all, give him fresh thunder!!!

I was compelled to read this book after watching the movie recently on HBO. Since I liked the movie, I knew the book would even be better and would shed more light on the characters and this book did. The movie has skipped a lot of parts and have repackage the story to fit a cinematic format, but nevetheless, I thought the movie did a pretty decent job in adapting it to screen.

The book starts out with ten year Wolff and his mother stuck on the side of the road because their car has overheated again and while waiting for the engine to cool off, they witness a truck going over a cliff because it has lost its brake. The beginning is allegorical of their story as they struggled thru abusive men, poverty and self doubt. But once in a while Toby and his mother would have some happier times although brief and few. I admire how Wolff never second guess what happened between his mother and the men whom she had relationships with, including his own father. He just gave enough details that you have to come up with your own conclusion. It isn't a really a happy book and at times you feel an overwhelming pity for Toby and his mom and wished things would be better in the next chapter but it never really did. Their lives was a constatnt struggle. The only thing that seem to hold them is each other and the perpetual belief that something better is around the corner. It's funny how we tend to have this sweet, nostalgic picture of the 50's of a sturdy, working dad, mom in the kitchen getting the meal ready and strong, gorgeous, all american kids that say "awh shucks" and "gee Wally" a lot. I think "This Boy's Life" was how things really were for a lot of single,poor women and their earnest little boys. I love reading this book, I started it in the morning and finished it by the next afternoon, this is always a hallmark of a good book and a good author. I hope you read it and enjoy it as well.

The only thing here which surpasses Wolff's insights about people and culture is his talent for language. I've used this book in my college writing classes for nearly five years now, and I can confidently say that it does more to teach more people more about how beautiful language and writing can be than any book I've ever read, used, or seen tried. Within a few days of reading it, even our modern less-than-focused Freshmen are eager to spend a whole class period discussing one magnificently crafted sentence, two stunningly perfect word-choices. And it's not just delightful as a work of writing, but plain funny as hell, too.

I read Tobias Wolff's novel Old School and thought it was just okay, but his memoir was really great. He recounts his childhood from Florida to a small town in Washington State. His narratives are extremely interesting, from forging checks, planning to run away to Alaska, and stealing cars. It was not only an entertaining book, but also an interesting look at one boy's childhood. And personally, I just love the memoir genre. Memoirs are so interesting.

*You can read all of my reviews on my blog, [...]*

You will not be disappointed by Tobias Wolff's memoir of his unusual boyhood. True, the book is grim at times, but it is also filled with sensitivity and a quiet hopefulness. If you've never read Toby Wolff before you are in for a real treat. If you've seen the Leonardo di Caprio, Robert de Niro, and Ellen Burnstyn movie (which was pretty good itself), you should read the book as well. You might also want to consider BOY (ISBN: 0141303050) by Roald Dahl and STAND BEFORE YOUR GOD (ISBN: 0679759417) by Paul Watkins for similarly comic tragedies of boyhood. Personally, I think that Geoffrey Wolff's memoir, THE DUKE OF DECEPTION, rivals or even surpasses THIS BOY'S LIFE, as fine as it is.