[Williams'] death infuses the book, already plenty moving, already plenty searing, with an extra measure of 'what might have been' and 'Mike, we hardly knew you' poignancy ... Addiction, by turns sneaky and sly and strutting, is a principal character in Scenes from My Life, which charts Williams’s struggle to overcome poverty, neglect, bullying, and abuse.
Poignant, vivid ... His memoir offers relatively few details about his acting career, drug use or romantic relationships. Instead, it is a sensitive exploration of his journey to become an advocate for young people from backgrounds like his who get stuck in the school-to-prison pipeline.
Much of this memoir hits all the more poignantly with his death ... The prose is rarely more than workmanlike—co-author Sternfeld says the book was near completion when Williams died—but he projects an engaging humility and candor throughout. Those qualities are especially stark in the final pages ... A bittersweet memento.
