Book review of the Tobias Wolff novel, Old School

Old School by Tobias Wolff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Can’t say I’ve ever had a hankering to get inside the mind of a teenage boy, but now that the young prep-school narrator of Old School by Tobias Wolff has opened his world to me, I’m fascinated. It helps that this boy loves writing, and his prep school places supreme importance on literary studies. Reading about his final year (1961) there, I was immersed in discussions of books, their ideas and authors, especially the three authors invited to speak: Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. The boys compete to have their writings chosen by these famous authors for a mentoring appointment. Old School’s socioeconomic, political, and anti-Semitic undercurrents ground it in the 1960s. Although the novel’s ending seems a bit of a left turn, I very much enjoyed Wolff’s vivid, energetic writing.



View all my reviews