Personal Review

Personal Review

This Boy’s Life has to be one of my favorite books that I have read during high school, which I think is mostly a result of my ability to relate to the book because of similarities in the author’s and my childhood. Needless to say, our two experiences were nowhere near similar, aside from a few things such as being boys and liking guns.

Leaving those differences aside, I felt like this book was very enjoyable to read, especially because it was easy to understand and some of the situations Wolff had to endure were, although painful, very absorbing. One of the aspects that I especially enjoyed were the narrations made towards events that occurred when Wolff was a child, however using his writing ability to describe them in the mind of an adult. This descriptions made by the author reminded me of the movie “The Christmas Story” and the commentaries that an adult Ralph made about his comical childhood experiences with Christmas. Another reason why I enjoyed this novel was because of the numerous descriptions Wolff’s surroundings, which were able to create very vivid pictures of life in Utah, Seattle, and finally Concrete. The most interesting facet of these descriptions was the absence of rhetorical strategies, which in most books are the key to creating vibrant pictures in the readers’ minds. The only other author I have encountered with a writing style similar to Wolff is Ernest Hemingway who uses very few rhetorical strategies because he believes in limiting elaborate and flowery style and diction used by authors such as Hawthorne or Dickens. This novel was extremely engaging for me and there were not any detractors that I could think of.