Customer Reviews

This Boy's Life: A Memoir

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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 belongings, and tries to enforce 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 he is a sophomore in high school, he talks with his older brother for the first time in six years. His brother, now a student at Princeton, remained with his father when his parents split, and he encourages Jack to apply as a scholarship student to an eastern boarding school, thereby escaping his step-father and starting yet another new life. Jack's only academic interest to date has been in writing, thanks to the inspiration of his English teacher, but he is intrigued with the idea of escape. The story of how Wolff lies and cheats his way into 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, which is 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, family, and the preacher with whom he lives for three months, 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. n Mary Whipple

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.

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

My first Wolff book, Old School, was disappointing thanks in part to all I had heard about Mr. Wolff's writing. I appreciated the good writing but was disapointed in the plot line, so vowed to pick this book up and give Mr. Wolff another try. I was very pleased I did.

One's first thought after reading this book is: How could someone with such a messed up up-bringing turn out so well? It must be like the blues - you have to have a tough youth to make it in the memoir category.

This is the story of Mr. Wolff's youth where he follows his mother from one abusive man to another. Much of the book is centered on the years with his first step-father who is: a) a drunk; b) abusive to him; and, c) constantly accuses him of being a liar, a fraud and a cheat in one form or another. It turns out that the step-father is right. However, most of the time young Wolff gets away with his drinking, stealing and fraud, thanks in part to his mother's belief he can do no wrong.

One of the most impressive things about this memoir is that Wolff gives himself no quarter. Not only does he recognize the bad things he does, he recognizes his bad motives and bad thoughts - even those that do not get acted upon. He is brutally honest about himself. Also, without saying outright, he recognizes his mother's weakness in picking men.

Again, Mr. Wolff's writing is terrific. It is fittingly stark for the portrayal of the subject matter. The descriptions of the other characters in his life and Chinook and Concrete (the towns in which he lived and went to high school, respectively) draw a perfect picture.

This memoir is well worth the time. It will stay with you for long after the reading.

Tobias Wolff is one of my favorite fiction writers, and here he presents the first part of his memoirs and proves adept at this genre, also. The story of his mom's life, it seems, is to get seriously involved with abusive, possessive and controlling men, who foist their ugliness on young Toby. Toby's mother is not a weak pathetic person, but is actually a vibrant, warm soul who is a poor judge of character. Toby's filial loyalty and genuine concern for his mom make him a sort of enabler, as he tries to be a sport and go along with each subsequent relationship.

All the characters in the book are compelling, from Toby's absentee dad to his self-absorbed, immature, poor-sport stepfather, Dwight, to the friends he makes. Toby is a typical adolescent--he's good-hearted, but can be very bad; he's smart, but can do stupid things, he's compassionate, but capable of cruelty.

Wolff's writing will break your heart and then make you laugh out loud. (His description of the Lawrence Welk show was more vivid than a TV re-run could be.) You know that Toby and his mom will not only survive their horrible domestic situation, but will eventually prevail.

The movie, which features L. DiCaprio as Toby and R. DeNiro as Dwight, is a pretty good rendition of the book. But read the book first. There are few memoirs in its class.

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.

If ever you've wondered what it's like to be an adolescent boy caught between an irresponsible father and an abusive stepfather, here's your chance. In reading this book you become the boy and see life through his eyes. You live the consequences of a well-meaning mother who makes predictably poor choices in the men in her life. These choices leave her son adrift, confused and rebellious, unsure of where he belongs. He sets out to be a wise guy; a tough masking the uncertainty he feels. His stepfather, Dwight, masking his own demons and insecurities, also sets out on a mission--to drive Toby (alias Jack) down to his level. It's to Toby/Jack's credit that he doesn't want to stay down and that's enough of an edge. Instinctively using the creative license of his absent father, he finds a tenuous way out--enough of a break to set him on a better path. Most boys in this situation don't make it. I know. My brother didn't make it. This story is an honest picture of the lives of too many divorced women and their children. (I also recommend you read Geoffrey Wolff's "The Duke of Deception" for the other half of this family saga.)

In the opening scene of THIS BOY'S LIFE, young Toby Wolff and his mother are parked on the descent of a mountain road, waiting for the overheated engine of their cheap car to cool. An 18-wheeler suddenly blows past them, swerving wildly - his brakes are gone. Later, as they descend the mountain, Toby sees the semi has driven off a cliff, falling several hundred feet into a river below. This incident, obviously intended as a metaphor for the boy's life we are about to read, presumably signals bad things to come. Nevertheless, Tobias Wolff's boyhood memoir is a charming story of growing up in the 1950s in just this side of a trailer park culture, a story about creating adolescent identities as freely as trying on shoes until the right fit is found.

Not surprisingly, the main identity seeker in THIS BOY'S LIFE is "this boy." Toby lives with his divorced mother and her man friend, the physically abusive Roy. As the book opens, Toby and his mother are fleeing Florida and Roy for Utah, where they believe they can get rich by prospecting for uranium (this is the early 1950's, and atomic bombs were all the rage). Roy follows them to Utah where they settle for a while, but Roy's insistence on having children prompts Toby's mother to take him on the road again. By the luck of the bus schedule draw, they end up in Seattle. Over time, Toby's mother meets another man, Dwight, eventually decides to marry him (to give Toby a father figure), and moves into Dwight's home in the small town of Concrete. Along the way, Toby has changed his name to Jack because a girl in his class was named Toby, and because he likes Jack London stories. Roy has introduced Toby/Jack to rifles, and Dwight introduces him to the Boy Scouts.

Toby is not alone in seeking an identity. His childhood friend Terry Silver, whose father is a Jewish cantor, wears homemade Nazi armbands and yells anti-Semitic epithets at people he dislikes. Later, Toby meets a Father Karl who turns out to be a convert to Christianity and whose parents were Jewish concentration camp victims. Another young friend, Arthur, takes on the "good schoolboy" identity even though he and Toby both know that that's not the real Arthur. An older friend, Chuck, tells Toby about the marriage he has already fully imagined for himself, even as he faces the prospect of going to jail for the statutory rape of a girl in whom he has no interest. Toby's mother scuttles from job to job and man to man, choosing badly in most instances and then resigns herself to the consequences with almost Job-like endurance. Even Dwight struggles to define himself as something more than the loser he is, imagining himself among other things a great white hunter.

The real Toby in all of this, however, is a lost child. He is constantly in trouble, hangs out with other bad kids, disregards school, steals things from stores, attempts to forge checks, takes lying to an almost obsessive level, and ultimately gets caught stealing gasoline from a car belonging to a dirt-poor farm family. Curiously, he seems completely uninterested in girls and never gets himself into the kinds of female relationship troubles his friends manage to find. His most outrageous lie actually lands him an opportunity he doesn't deserve, and although the end result was less than a success, it seems to have paved the way for the adult Toby to emerge. The end doesn't justify the means, but without Toby's chosen means, the end would likely have been bad, perhaps tragic. So who can say for sure?

THIS BOY'S LIFE is a veritable paean to male parental dysfunction. Toby's real father, rich and living in Connecticut, is both physically and emotionally distant. The reasons are never made clear, a confusing circumstance given the apparently successful upbringing of Toby's older brother, Geoffrey (a Choate and Princeton graduate). When he finally elects to insert himself back into his younger son's life, Toby's father proves himself catastrophically useless. Then there are the physically abusive Roy and the pathologically insecure Dwight. Dwight in particular is the bane of Toby's youth, sometimes verbally abusive, other times physically so. He is a loser extraordinaire, laughably pathetic in his efforts to assert his manliness yet ominously dangerous as a consequence of his utter ineptitude. Dwight's self-esteem is so low that he exerts his power over Toby and his mother by driving drunk at high speeds with them, stealing Toby's paper route earnings, forcing Toby into meaningless "punishment chores," and partaking in weird control freak exercises like counting all the candies in the house every night to see how many Toby had eaten.

Slowly but surely, Tobias Wolff leads us on a journey that, through many twists and turns, reveals bits and pieces of the adult. We can imagine the man based on the childhood, and the author provides enough clues to point us in the right direction. Young Toby's life was indeed something of a wild, careening ride down a mountain road with very little for brakes. Wolff skids on the shoulder a few times and bumps a guard rail or two, but in the end, he avoids the cliffs and manages to reach what we can assume was a reasonable adulthood.

Writer Tobias Wolff does a superb job of recreating his dysfunctional childhood in his memoir _This Boy's Life_. The journey he and his mother take across the country to get away from an abusive relationship lands them in places where they have nothing and know no one. Through it all Toby Wolff and his single mother make the best of what they have and constantly strive for bigger and better things. The struggle of this small family is easily relatable to many readers across the country who have dealt with and are dealing with similar problems. That's why when the reader is finished reading this book they feel a sort of connection or peace rather than a deep emotional pain because they know that similar things go on and they aren't as "different" as they think. The fact that this book is a real life drama appeals to many people and makes the book more fascinating. Wolff does a wonderful job of making this book flow and connect. His down to earth writing style and structured plot bring the book together and leaves the reader with a contentment that most books about family issues don't.

I am a junior in high school and I read this book for my Advanced Contemporary Lit Class. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read a book that was not written for entertaining but for the value it personally brings to the author and to the reader.

It seems presumptuous to write a review of this book. It's capable of standing alone, selling forever, and being widely and deeply admired without anyone ever writing another review of it. Published in 1989, This Boy's Life is a memoir of Tobias Wolff's grim teenage years in which he is pitted in a battle of wills against his abusive stepfather. The intelligence and deception employed by the child prove a nearly equal match against the cruelty of the adult in this equation. In exquisite prose, Wolff leavens the grisly reality with dark humor, and readers are surprised, considering the subject matter, to find themselves not depressed overall, but uplifted.