I'm not usually much for memoirs and I read this for my book club. There were some hiccups I had in the beginning where I really felt I was forcing myself to continue. But that said, Wolff is a very good writer! I really want to read Old School now. The story of his life was quite ordinary but compelling? If that makes sense. The abusive step-dad and useless mother happen all the time unfortunately and the way Wolff wrote about his relationship with his step-dad was a little confusing. Sometimes the step-dad (can't remember his name for some reason) came across as just plain weird in his attention to Tobias/Jack and sometimes it was simply physically abusive. I guess like it actually was in real life, I never knew 100% where he stood with his step-dad. What we talked about a lot in my book club was how much of it we felt was actually true, he just was an exaggerator and an admitted liar by nature. But in the end it didn't really matter to us if it was true, it was a good solid read.