This Boy's Life: A Memoir

This Boy's Life: A Memoir
by Tobias Wolff

This Boy's Life: A Memoir
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tobias Wolff
Edition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2000-01-20
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Grove Press

Book Reviews of This Boy's Life: A Memoir

Book Review: An Engaging Book About a Duplicitous Boy
Summary: 4 Stars

The young Tobias Wolff is not much of a protagonist. He lies, he cheats, he steals and never has a qualm about it even when caught. He has few redeeming qualities. Occasionally he is moved by someone's behavior, but for most of this book that covers approximately 1955-1961 he goes through adolescence without a rudder or a care. Mostly he seems dazed as he observes life from the wrong side of the tracks during a period most Americans remember nostalgically. His crimes are petty but many - dishonesty with himself and others seems to be his central trait. He longs for a better life and gets a chance for one when he lies his way into consideration for a scholarship at a prep school. His main antagonist is his step-father Dwight who is a completely unsympathetic character once he gets past the courtship phase with Wolff's mother. This is a very arid book emotionally although it rings true and is beautifully detailed and manicured. The book seems as aimless as its protagonist, but it is also a page-turner due to Wolff's wonderful narrative and descriptions of people and place. The details are not particularly about the period - little mention of the music, TV, movies, events, trends, and toys of the times but it does evoke some of the period's own duplicity where "Father Knows Best" lulled those of us who lived during it (I was born the same year as the author) into hiding from the more tragic families many of us lived in. I liked the book yet it leaves me numb, uninspired and wondering who is this boy at the center of this book and what was the point of it?

Summary of This Boy's Life: A Memoir

This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move, yet they develop an extraordinarily close, almost telepathic relationship. As Toby fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of adolescence. His various schemes - running away to Alaska, forging checks, and stealing cars - lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.

Fiction writer Tobias Wolff electrified critics with his scarifying 1989 memoir, which many deemed as notable for its artful structure and finely wrought prose as for the events it describes. The story is pretty grim: Teenaged Wolff moves with his divorced mother from Florida to Utah to Washington State to escape her violent boyfriend. When she remarries, Wolff finds himself in a bitter battle of wills with his abusive stepfather, a contest in which the two prove to be more evenly matched than might have been supposed. Deception, disguise, and illusion are the weapons the young man learns to employ as he grows up--not bad training for a writer-to-be. Somber though this tale of family strife is, it is also darkly funny and so artistically satisfying that most readers come away exhilarated rather than depressed.

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