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Fans of Patti Smith's Just Kids and Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends will love this beautifully written, entertaining and bracingly honest memoir by an actor, director and author who found his start as a 1980s Hollywood Brat pack member.
Most people know Andrew McCarthy from his roles in movies like Pretty in Pink and St Elmo's Fire, and as a charter member of Hollywood's Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heart throbs, including Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore, has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture.
In Brat, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time and the most defining moments of his youth. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction and expectations of masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life, from scoring joints in Washington Square Park to skipping school in favor of the dark revival houses of the Village where he fell in love with the movies that would change his life.
Brat is at once an exclusive window into a defining period of pop-culture history and a surprising, intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.
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“[A] heartful memoir…McCarthy is clear-eyed and unsparing about Hollywood but takes the emotional intensity of the actor’s craft and life seriously. The result is a riveting portrait of the artist as a young man.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Shrewd storytelling …[with] brutal honesty…a timeless whirl through the surreal Hollywood shuffle."
— Entertainment Weekly“An honest exploration of the highs and lows of being part of the Hollywood crowd."
— Town & Country“The Brat Packer focuses on growing up in New York City in the ’80s, getting candid about lost innocence and the highs and lows of his rise to fame in Hollywood."
— CNN“McCarthy’s stories not only offer dishy name-dropping, but also near-constant humorous self-deprecation as he looks at his past with the advantages of age and time.”
— A. V. Club“McCarthy’s voice is like a Proustian madeleine that lulled me back to simpler times.”
— Vulture.com (audio review)Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Andrew McCarthy is the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Brat: An ‘80s Story. He is an award winning travel writer and served for a dozen years as an editor-at-larger at National Geographic Traveler magazine. Best known as an actor for the past four decades, he has appeared in such iconic films as Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero.