This Boy's Life

Such fabulous storytelling. Amazing.

Not finished it yet - I'm saving it. So far the narrator and his mother are equally cowed by dominant father-husband, who comes over as a psychopathic bully and egotist. In a melodrama he'd come to a sticky end, but this is more or less non-fiction, so I'm hooked to find out if said male chauvinist comes a cropper in the end.Finished it and ready for the re-read: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.'

No complaints about delivery - arrived adequately packaged etc. But the description of the book was 'good', whereas I would put it more at 'poor'. The book is shabby and heavily annotated inside - I don't mind so much, just wish it had said that in the description.

The honesty is remarkable. Wolff's childhood was hard and rebellious. He shows us how he survived it. I'll read more of his books.

Excellent thanks

A very interesting story which is well worth a read. It came to my notice as a result of watching the movie of the book.

Good condition. Great read. Good value for money.

Great