Unabridged Audiobook
Though this book is a memoir, it feels like a fictional novel. The author's talent is in his extractions, the way he distills big philosophies down to succinct, cutting sentences while avoiding pretentiousness or unoriginality. I've always thought an author's primary job is to do just that, to be a filter through which reality is sieved, to make order emerge from chaos and then set out to define it. Tobias Wolff applied this to his own life, something that, after reading this book, if you're like me, you'll wish you could do as effectively and truthfully with yourself. The depth of honesty in his self-reckoning is a thing to admire and aspire to. There appears in these pages no space for deception, and you're brought through scenes of almost tragic miscues and then the bungling efforts to morally reconcile the wrongs against the idea of innocence and the victim's own imperfect responses. The author never seems pathetic or to beg for mercy or forgiveness. The slate he chose to tell us his history is frightfully clean and open, allows no posturing, and seems almost too honest, as if you're listening in on someone's confession, though the sins he's guilty of seem to a certain degree tame these days. Wolff pulls from all of these moments the deeper truths embedded there. It's a refreshingly insightful read/listen. The narrator was just right.
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