Editors Reads Verdict
The finest American memoir of the postwar period alongside Mary Karr's The Liars' Club — Wolff writes about his lying, thieving, angry younger self with the clarity of someone who has fully understood rather than merely excused him.
What We Loved
- The prose is among the most lucid and controlled in American memoir — Wolff never excuses himself but never condemns himself either
- Dwight is one of memoir's great villains — a small man who requires absolute submission and punishes self-assertion
- The portrait of lying as a survival strategy and a form of self-construction is philosophically original
Minor Drawbacks
- Some readers want more retrospective analysis than Wolff provides — he renders rather than explains
- The pace slows in the Chinook sections before the escape to Hill School
Key Takeaways
- → The self is not discovered but constructed — Wolff's compulsive lying is an early, desperate version of what the memoir itself performs
- → A brutal domestic environment does not automatically produce self-knowledge — it takes decades and writing to understand what happened
- → Escape is not the end of the story — what you carry from the place you escaped continues to operate on you
| Author | Tobias Wolff |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| Pages | 288 |
| Published | January 1, 1989 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir, Non-Fiction |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Memoir readers and literary non-fiction readers who want one of the great American coming-of-age narratives, and readers of Wolff's fiction who want the autobiographical source. |
Toby
The boy in the memoir calls himself Jack, then Toby, then Jack again — the name changes are part of the self-construction that is his central activity. He is ten when the memoir begins, moving from Florida to Utah with his mother, Rosemary, who is trying to escape a violent boyfriend. They are always moving. The self is always under construction.
In Concrete, Washington, Rosemary meets Dwight, who is solid and employed and attentive. He seems like stability. Toby knows immediately that Dwight is wrong, that the attention is surveillance, that the stability is a mechanism for control. He is not entirely wrong.
Dwight
Dwight Hansen is one of memoir’s great portraits of small-scale domestic tyranny. He is not a dramatic villain — he does not make speeches or perform cruelty with theatrical flair. He is petty, systematic, relentless. He assigns Toby chores whose real purpose is humiliation. He confiscates the money Toby earns on his paper route. He requires gratitude for things that are not gifts.
Wolff’s escape — fabricated recommendations, a false transcript, a successful application to the Hill School in Connecticut — is the memoir’s triumph. But the memoir is honest about what it cost and what it left behind. His mother remained with Dwight for years.
The 1993 film with Robert De Niro as Dwight, Ellen Barkin as Rosemary, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Toby is one of the better literary adaptations of its decade.
Our rating: 4.4/5 — One of the great American memoirs; Wolff’s clarity about his own younger self is extraordinary.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "This Boy's Life" about?
Tobias Wolff's memoir of his childhood in the late 1950s in Chinook, Washington, with his mother and her brutal second husband Dwight. He lies compulsively, reinvents himself repeatedly, and eventually escapes to a Connecticut boarding school on fraudulently obtained recommendations. One of the great American coming-of-age memoirs — about the self as a thing to be constructed rather than discovered.
Who should read "This Boy's Life"?
Memoir readers and literary non-fiction readers who want one of the great American coming-of-age narratives, and readers of Wolff's fiction who want the autobiographical source.
What are the key takeaways from "This Boy's Life"?
The self is not discovered but constructed — Wolff's compulsive lying is an early, desperate version of what the memoir itself performs A brutal domestic environment does not automatically produce self-knowledge — it takes decades and writing to understand what happened Escape is not the end of the story — what you carry from the place you escaped continues to operate on you
Is "This Boy's Life" worth reading?
The finest American memoir of the postwar period alongside Mary Karr's The Liars' Club — Wolff writes about his lying, thieving, angry younger self with the clarity of someone who has fully understood rather than merely excused him.
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