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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Oh how I love memoirs, but I especially loved this one.
This was a fantastic book. It was particularly interesting to me, as the author's brother Toby, fiction writer and memoirist as well, I read first. Tobias actually wrote his memoir after Geoffrey, and his book, 'This Boy's Life' was adapted into a movie. It was fascinating since the brothers, who weren't close in age, were raised one by their mother, and one by their father in various places in the United States. Each one of them, lead the most riveting of childhoods yet in very different ways.
Their father, Duke, as they called him, was raised rather harshly yet frivolously by his physician father who seemed to shower him with gifts rather than affection or time. Geoffrey's father therefore struggled greatly in life, and gravitated towards a very materialistic existence, built on lying and cheating and trying to be something he was not. Their mother, raised in an equally difficult way by her military father, sought out the love of men, but also seemed cold, or at least not expecting much out of life as I understood it. She and Toby were constantly running from men, sometimes very dangerous people, and Geoff didn't have much contact with her or his much younger brother growing up.
Dukes existence, therefore, Geoffrey's was to keep up airs and maintain a respectable social standing. It was a mask put over the human in order for others to see them as they were not, to be seen as they thought others would prefer to see them.
Geoffrey's struggle with himself is noble to me. He tried so hard to understand his father, and I find this memoir his search of self discovery, to make meaning out of some very painful circumstances. To be influenced by such an enigma of a father. And to learn about his father's heritage and slowly accept it as his own, when it sounded like people weren't very accepting of that group of people at the time, must have been so confusing. Knowing exactly what your heritage is should be a starting point, a foundation to build on, so that you can go out and seek your soul.
This was a fantastic book. It was particularly interesting to me, as the author's brother Toby, fiction writer and memoirist as well, I read first. Tobias actually wrote his memoir after Geoffrey, and his book, 'This Boy's Life' was adapted into a movie. It was fascinating since the brothers, who weren't close in age, were raised one by their mother, and one by their father in various places in the United States. Each one of them, lead the most riveting of childhoods yet in very different ways.
Their father, Duke, as they called him, was raised rather harshly yet frivolously by his physician father who seemed to shower him with gifts rather than affection or time. Geoffrey's father therefore struggled greatly in life, and gravitated towards a very materialistic existence, built on lying and cheating and trying to be something he was not. Their mother, raised in an equally difficult way by her military father, sought out the love of men, but also seemed cold, or at least not expecting much out of life as I understood it. She and Toby were constantly running from men, sometimes very dangerous people, and Geoff didn't have much contact with her or his much younger brother growing up.
Dukes existence, therefore, Geoffrey's was to keep up airs and maintain a respectable social standing. It was a mask put over the human in order for others to see them as they were not, to be seen as they thought others would prefer to see them.
Geoffrey's struggle with himself is noble to me. He tried so hard to understand his father, and I find this memoir his search of self discovery, to make meaning out of some very painful circumstances. To be influenced by such an enigma of a father. And to learn about his father's heritage and slowly accept it as his own, when it sounded like people weren't very accepting of that group of people at the time, must have been so confusing. Knowing exactly what your heritage is should be a starting point, a foundation to build on, so that you can go out and seek your soul.
This book is written by Tobias Wolff's brother, Geoffrey. Tobias wrote This Boy's Life, which I read two books ago. This was a little harder for me to get into than This Boy's Life was, but after I got past their dad's family history, it started getting better. I loved the parts that overlapped with Tobias' story. And I have to say, I am shocked by Geoffrey's loyalty to his father, saying, he was a bad man, but a good father.