The Author (Frank Conroy)

Frank Conroy is a writer—a novelist and memoirist—and musician. Stop-time is his autobiographical recollection of his childhood and adolescence, his experiences of beginning to grow from childhood into adulthood. He portrays himself throughout this memoir as something of a risk taker and a rule breaker, always searching for independence from his family and their various oppressions. This sometimes comes across as selfishness, and there are times when the author, as self-portrayed by the adult version, is somewhat unsympathetic. Overall, however, the author seems to be generous enough of spirit and perspective to treat his selfishness with a compassion that only occasionally veers into the sentimental.

An important quality to note about the book is that in his childhood as he portrays it, the author doesn't seem to know that what he's doing is following a pattern, living a life of independence...