This Boy's Life

For my 2nd Quarter SSR, one of the books I read was This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff

In the beginning of the story that explains their new life, Toby and Rosemary, his mother, leaves Florida and her abusive husband to get rich on uranium in Utah. When they get there, Toby promises to change and even adopt a new name, but Rosemary tells him that in return he take catechism classes and take Jonathan as his new baptismal name. He meets new friends and they’re accompanied by Rosemary’s ex-boyfriend Roy. After Roy finally leaves, they move to Seattle and there, Toby, now Jack meets new friends while his mother meets many romantic interests. As children, they are violent and commit minor transgressions, such as vandalism, and they all together with the children’s mothers move into a big house. This Journey taking about half of the memoir, Rosemary began her adventure with Dwight; however, Jack isn’t very accepting. Jack moves to Chinook with him and Dwight forces him to do many jobs and take his money. Although he meets up once again with Rosemary in Seattle, Dwight makes sure to pester them over and over again in fear of Jack spilling the beans. Dwight makes sure to give Jack many things in order to keep him quiet, and Jack became silence. From then on, the story builds into a fight Jack has, and the many decisions he has to make between his happiness and his mother's happiness; however, is this Dwight really good for his family?

I enjoyed reading this book because I was very pessimistic as a child. During this heart-wrenching story did I feel the utmost sorrow for how his life played out to be. Reading this book consolidated me but not for the reason of relating to it, but for the reason of opening up my eyes to how grateful I should be about my life. My only problem with the book was that reading this confused me at some points because of everything going on in the book. Many things were happening and sometimes I would forget what just happened previously and it’s connection to the next paragraph. I don’t blame Wolff for this packing of information, since it’s about 25-30 years of life written in 288 pages.