I liked Wolff's simple and elegant style of writing, but the story didn't draw me in as much as most memoirs. Maybe it was written too matter-of-factly, but I didn't get the strong emotions that Wolff has conveyed more in interviews. Still, would love to read some more of his work.

This book was enjoyable, but not an engaging read. I read it when I had a spare fifteen minutes, but it was not one I wanted to read for hours on end. I much prefer plot-driven novels to memoirs. However, "Jack" was a very real character, and I couldn't help rooting for him, hoping everything would work out in his life. I think I would have liked a better conclusion. I didn't feel like I had a good picture of who he turned into as an adult, but I suppose that wasn't really the point of the book.

I found This Boy's Life to be a bit mundane. Not necessarily the story, but the presentation. Wolff had a dramatic and potentially traumatic upbringing, but that in itself is not worthy of being written about. Unfortunately thousands (and probably millions) of people have a dramatic/traumatic life, so (again, unfortunately) that is a bit mundane. What makes a story worth telling is what the writer has to say about that life, what did the author make of that life, what interpretations are made, what value is added to the world by the telling of the story. I feel Wolff missed his opportunity to take his story further, to offer something to those of us who read his story.

I liked his writing style...I just didn't like him.

I liked this book, but at first, I did not like the narrator. But, as I got to know him, I began to realize that some, if not most of his behavior issues as a boy were not choices, but rather circumstantial. I look at people I've known through the years who have luckily had one constant in their life and see how different they grow up to be versus those that don't. Toby's mother was that one constant. She wasn't just a mother, but was often a comrade as they battled their way through the dangers of Dwight's violence and dysfunction. As many reviewers, it is hard for me to pinpoint what I liked about the book other than it spoke to me in a manner that was both self-reflective and sympathetic for people I am close to that grew up with childhoods of this nature.

I had seen the movie based on this book and was curious to see how the movie and book differed. I'm a big fan of memoirs of troubled and/or quirky childhoods (examples include "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls, "Lucky" by Alice Sebold, "Running With Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs, "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt, and "Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir: by Jenny Lawson). Wolff's story of growing up with an unconventional mother, an abusive step-father, and a cast of hard-drinking, bad-boy friends is compelling - his obvious sympathy and love of his mother and his steadfast and peculiarly captivating self-destructive streak makes one root wholeheartedly for his eventual transformation into a writer and loving father.

Full of the kind of oblique, poetically crafted sentences that English professors and students spend their lives just trying to dissect or approximate. Wolff gets closer here to explaining the strange behaviors and feelings of growing up than most other writers ever have.

Happiness is endless hapiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.

Anybody with an interest in reading or writing memoirs should read this one. Wolff's narrative is just beautiful, and really pulls the reader into his boyhood journey.

Decent, quick read.