Rating: 
Summary: Sidestepping Cliches
Review: The trick in this book is in sidestepping expectations from this genre. You'll decide if the author was successful or not as you wait at one pont for the other shoe to drop (speaking of cliches). I have yet to decide if the unnamed narrator and the restricted aspect of this personal point of view works as well as an alternative point of view might have worked. I've been reading this author since he first published and greatly admire his short fiction. I had read three of these chapters as exerpts in magazines and found them powerful by themselves. This novel has that quality of an episodic collection of stories for at least the the first three or four chapters.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully written account
Review: Wolff has written a wonderful account of a year in the life of a private-school attendee. The narrator is looking back on a defining year in his life, a year in which he made a life-altering mistake. It takes him approximately 40 years to redeem himself, and in his case, time is the ultimate healer.This is in contrast to a minor character's fall from grace. The headmaster of the private school has lived a lie. And while he hasn't actually made misstatements about his life, he also hasn't corrected others' misperceptions about who he is and whom he knows. In the end, he, too, is redeemed, but in a far different manner from the book's narrator. The headmaster is redeemed through honesty, seemingly a much quicker route than the narrator's 40-year travail. Wolff demonstrates two paths to redemption: time and honesty. He leaves it to the reader to determine which is ultimately more effective. Wollf's writing style is somewhat reminiscent of one of the book's main characters, one who never actually shows up, but is referred to constantly: Ernest Hemingway. And as the book's characters are all-to-well aware, there could be far worse role models to be compared to.
Rating:
Summary: Redemption
Review: Wolff has written a beautiful book about the redeeming nature of time and honesty. Two characters within this novel, one primary, the other secondary, go through a crisis of misrepresentation. The main character, the narrator, misrepresents who he is through plagiarism. Conversely, the headmaster misrepresents who he is through failing to correct the misperceptions of those around him. His students and colleagues think that he has a stronger connection to Ernest Hemingway than he actually has. Both, in the end, are redeemed. With the narrator, it takes years to be able to be proud of who he is and what he has accomplished. All of his actions following his plagiarism are aimed toward redemption. His misdeed is what directs him. The headmaster realizes that, although quite subtle, his misrepresentation is equally as bad and through terrific honesty over the course of a year, is able to come back "home." Wolff's writing is beautiful throughout this slim novel. Like many of Hemingway's novels, not an unnecessary word is used. Wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Good Story
Review: I read a book a week. I like them short. This one I wish hadn't ended. While I wrestle with that dilemma, I'll go re-read this book. It was pretty moving.
Rating:
Summary: A poignant meditation on our character---and how we get it
Review: Tobias Wolff's gentle ear for "book-drunk boys" submerging themselves in the writing life is as true to boys as anything out there--more so than the Christlike hero of "A Seperate Peace" or the bratty disaffection of Holden Caufield in the ubiquitous "Catcher in the Rye", or myriad other tired, ivy-clad coming-of-age tirades. The boys' school is there, all right (minus the irritating rapes and violence), and so is the betrayal, but Wolff's theme is betrayal of oneself, the sting of which can ache down the years in all our hearts, regardless of our circumstances. And what an elegiac, beautiful sting it is. This novel is so quotable--and in spots so funny--you'll want to keep it close. The boys' stabs at essays and poems (inevitably mirroring an author whom they're trying to impress) are a scream. But it's the narrator and his search for the real that are most touching. Put "Old School" next to Philip Larkin's "Jill" as one of the few boys-to-men books that rings true.
Rating:
Summary: A Mutual Peace
Review: This book completes the prep school trilogy along with The Catcher In The Rye and A Separate Peace. Ambition, literature and honor collide in a New England boys' school where competition pushes the envelope of understanding and integrity in unexpected ways. As a product of such a boy's school, I recognize the world within the sixth form that presses our narrator towards a crushing fall from grace. The competition for private audiences with the lions of literature in the early 1960's (Frost, Rand, Hemmingway) is so intense, and the actual selections so misguided that we are left to wonder would the real Frost or Rand have made the same mistake. However, the ambiguity of the selection process serves to elevate the game while depressing the honor with which it should be played. Significantly, Wolff proposes a new form of honor for morally ambiguous times, but this is a suggestion we would be well to avoid. The real test of honor lies in its ability to elevate standards and not lower them. Plagiarism cannot be the sincerest form of flattery as the victim of the narrator's perfidy tells him comfortingly. To disagree with Wolff is to enjoy most richly what this book has to offer. In years to come new generations of students will debate Wolff's hypothesis late into the night. Out of it will come a deeper appreciation of what literature can bring to life, much as Salinger and Knowles have done for the past half century.
Rating:
Summary: A mostly great book
Review: The last 10 or 12 pages of the book could have been trimmed off and the book would have only been stronger as a result. The book was marvellous most of the way, though. Great writing through the eyes of an adolescent, something Wolff has mastered.
My favorite part of the book came when Wolff, through Wolff's character, utterly destroys the abominable philosophy of Ayn Rand, in a touching, succinct, and wondrously human way.
Rating: 
Summary: I was hoping for more...
Review: A story about a working-class boy that attends a New England preperatory school in the early 1960s; he has a great passion for literature, and aspires to be a writer himself. Wolff has created a sort of memoir, as well as a coming-of-age novel. Honestly, I was expecting a little more... this was my first book to read by Wolff, I heard many good things about him, and read a review that highly praised it... yet, I thought there were many unanswered questions.
Rating:
Summary: An incredibly solid novel
Review: I was surprised that Old School was Wolff's first novel. The intrigue of this book lies in its look at writing as an occupation, as a way of living. Beyond that, Wolff's look at the socioeconomic tensions that typified boarding schools like his narrator's unnamed school is excellent. If you love good literature and like reading about the love of literature, I highly recommend this book. The end is a little slow and not quite as attention-grabbing as the first three quarters of the book, however.
Rating:
Summary: self inspection
Review: This book reads like a memoir except the last two chapters. All the reviews say it's about a boy in prep school who is an aspiring writer. He wants to win writing competitions for audiences with three writers Frost, Rand, and Hemingway. In reality the book is about our how our inner conscience works on us. How we get trapped into showing outwardly a false persona. At times we like the recognition and acting the part people think we are. However, deep inside we long to be above the life of a lie we are living. The book makes you think and feel inside yourself to see what and who we really are.
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