This Boy's Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of This Boy's Life: A Memoir
Book Review: Best Book I've Ever Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I would love to say this book made me want to be a writer. But the chronology is all wrong. I'm nearly seventy and have just read it, and I have been writing for the past 50 years. However there is a quality her that transcends fiction, nonfiction, time and it even transcends identity. Wolff presents this memoir of his youth, not like an adult looking back or a child seeing ahead, but as an experience readers live as if it were happening to us. And it is.
I had seen the DeNiro film and it is excellent. But this is Great Expectations, Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn without straining to be any of those masterpieces. I don't know how Tobias Wolff can capture such nuances of past events in words but I want to write until I learn how. No, even if I never do, let me admit to you, I don't have to. Because Wolff's childhood is more real to me than my own.
- John Lehman, Rosebud Book Reviews.com
Book Review: Better than the Movie- a good read
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Brilliant Book
Summary: 4 Stars
This Boy's Life is an excellent written and intriguing book. The author Tobias Wolff writes about his childhood relating well with many other people's lives as well as the feelings and emotions that are a part of it. Even though there are many pages to this book the reader becomes lost in the story of Toby's life to read very quickly. This is an exceptionally good book if the reader loves action. In many cases, Toby escapes This boy also tries to be fierce and a rebellion, someone he is not at all inside. Conflicts internally and externally erupt in him as Toby travels through the journey of life.Toby experiences the hard age of teenage years during this book. In the beginning, Jack, as he had preferred to be called at this time, grows up with a single mother who is also looking for herself. She searches around looking for the "perfect man" destined to be out there, dragging Jack from Florida to Utah to escape a boyfriend to find themselves in no better conditions. Toby recalls, "There was no reason for me to have this feeling. I thought I'd left it back in Florida, together with my fear of fighting and my shyness with girls, but here it was, come to meet me." (Page 12) This mother brings her child across the country finally settling down with an individual named Dwight just outside Seattle. Toby goes to a highschool called concrete and doesn't get the best grades, yet he hopes to go to college someday just like his brother Geoffrey who lived with their father. Geoffrey goes to a high-maintenance prep school, making Toby strive for the same acceptance. Dwight however seems to have no respect for Toby or his mother. Many children today struggle with the same conflict as Toby, the absence of a fatherly figure letting others understand how it feels. Jack also feels "uncool" at times. Many adolescents in this stage feel the natural feeling of low self-confidence and regret. The author thoroughly understands and remembers the feelings some teenagers secretly feel inside. Wolff approves in many instances, mostly of the approval of men by his mother when it secretly bothered him. Toby is on a journey to discover who he really is in life. He is constantly searching for a purpose and approval.
This memoir has 288 pages altogether. This may seem like a long tedious book however it is not. This Boy's Life is a fast read, little time goes by as the reader notices s/he has read many pages. The author makes every page worthwhile by letting the reader become lost in the book, eager to know what will happen next. Occasionally, the author also catches himself, making it even more exciting. He adds thoughts of what he would do after looking back at the situation or thoughts of his presents home connected to the story. "I can always see Dwight's face and hear his voice. I hear his own voice in my own when I speak to my children in anger. They hear it too, and look at me in surprise. My youngest once said `Don't you love me anymore?'" (Page 232-233) Toby wrote this in the middle of the book explaining what Dwight meant to him, helping the reader to understand his point of view.
The autobiography by Tobias Wolff is also interesting to the reader who loves action. Throughout the whole book Toby lies to his mother and other adults about his grades. He changes the C's to straight A's so his mother does not worry. At one point, Toby changes costume and lies to a kind woman and ends up being chased down the street by her. Thankfully he gets away and changes back. Toby uses the costume to convince himself he's a "bad boy" so he could fit in with his friends. However, inside he wants to comfort his mother.
This book is highly recommended. Every page is worth it as Toby travels his journey of life. Read this book for more of Tobias Wolff's adventures as the author recalls his/her childhood and relates to this outstanding book.
Book Review: Brilliant Sensitive Boy Survives a Nincompoop Stepfather
Summary: 5 Stars
Tobias Wolff's classic memoir has all the elements of a fairy tale: a brilliant boy has the great misfortune of having an evil, simian, philistine stepfather impose his hate and ignorance on poor, almost helpless Tobias who, living with his mother and new family, endures a torture that resembles a noble character being oppressed in an evil castle. Tobias' stepfather Dwight is so frustrated and enraged by his own incompetence that he needs a scapegoat. And who should it be? His stepson Toby of course. This memoir pits the bright young Toby against his evil stepfather in a collision that has more drama than most novels. Tobias Wolff is so sharp that he is able to put his memoir in the context of The Great Gatsby and show a young man and his mother searching for identity and the American Dream of Eternal Self-Reinvention. We see Tobias grow up and become someone of great strength and humanity in spite of his malice- and rancor-filled stepfather in what is a highly compelling story of survival, wit, and struggling into young adulthood.Book Review: Brutally Honest
Summary: 4 Stars
"This Boy's Life" is an intriguing, realistic insight inside the mind of a brutally honest adolescent male. The main character Toby manages to get himself into trouble that by luck he escapes. Good is a word that falls short from describing the content and impact this book entangles the reader in. It's not a matter of being a good or bad book. It's a matter of utter shock as you read about the ignominious acts Toby was a part of; the pain and anguish his mother, Rosemary, goes through in not knowing how to deal with her son, and in failing to accept the responsibilities of being a mother. His sordid life makes one grateful. In the beginning, Toby's father leaves he and his mother. From that day on, he never knows a father. Each man Rosemary meets fails to love this mistake she made. Toby chooses to act out his pain in various ways--forging checks, stealing, and fighting--to catch his mother's attention. The abuse and pain Toby goes through with his step-father seems surreal, and by all means unacceptable. While there is so much twisted about Toby's way of thinking and struggles, it is none the less a novel that refuses to be put down. When you think the worst has come, a new plot twist lurks around the corner. The honesty in which Wolff writes is somewhat appalling, and somewhat admirable. His ability to convey the thoughts in a manner that holds nothing back scares me of male youth, and yet captures me by the way everything seems to work out. The novel is bold and exorbitant, and yet silently passionate. The motivation with which Wolff wrote his book is passed down to the reader. You feel the pain Toby goes through, and are in fact scarred by it yourself.
The one downfall to this book is the ending. Through all that's happened to this character, and after all that the reader is pulled through right along with him, the end proves disappointing. It comes to a screeching halt, denying the reader any pleasure of finality; any pleasure of knowing that good truly does conquer evil and Toby was able to turn his life around. My suggestion is to check the book out for yourself. You won't regret it.