This Boy's Life

A young artist finds his voice in THIS BOY'S LIFE, and narrator Oliver Wyman reproduces his adolescent tone with remarkable verve and clarity. Tobias Wolff's 1989 memoir of his early life with his submissive mother and the violent men who either stalk her or marry her is strangely humorous and extraordinarily brave in its naked portrayal of abuse and conflict. Wyman captures the Wolff character's longing for normalcy in a universe that is topsy-turvy from what most young men experience growing up in America. Wolff the writer views Wolff the teenager with a distance that Wyman could have played for pity. Instead Wyman follows the author's lead and makes this story both moving and inspiring without being depressing. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

December 1, 1988
In PEN/Faulkner Award-winner Wolff's fourth book, he recounts his coming-of-age with customary skill and self-assurance. Seeking a better life in the Northwestern U.S. with his divorced mother, whose ``strange docility, almost paralysis, with men of the tyrant breed'' taught Wolff the virtue of rebellion, he considered himself ``in hiding,'' moved to invent a private, ``better'' version of himself in order to rise above his troubles. Primary among these were the adultsdrolly eccentric, sometimes dementedwho were bent on humiliating him. Since Wolff the writer never pities Wolff the boy, the author characterizes the crew of grown-up losers with damning objectivity, from the neurotic stepfather who painted his entire house (piano and Christmas tree included) white, to the Native American football star whose ultimate failure was as inexplicable as his athletic brilliance. Briskly and candidly reportedWolff's boyhood best friend ``bathed twice a day but always gave off an ammoniac hormonal smell, the smell of growth and anxiety''his youth yields a self-made man whose struggle to fit the pieces together is authentic and endearing. Literary Guild alternate.