Thursday, June 10, 2021

Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy

 

I received the hardback edition of Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy for FREE through the Goodreads Giveaways program.

Below is my unbiased review of Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy.

Ugh, I was majorly disappointed with Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy!!! It was BORING, Boring, boring for the most part!!! I almost gave up reading this memoir several times as I thought it was so bad. There were a few interesting tidbits in later chapters, but for the most part it was a very dull read. 

Andrew McCarthy discusses a little bit about his childhood and home life at the start of his memoir. Then his memoir covers how he broke in to his acting career and also about dealing with fame. McCarthy lacked a lot of confidence and self esteem, which he discusses quite a bit about throughout his memoir. It seems like he also suffered from impostor syndrome too, although he doesn't use this term in his memoir. McCarthy also develops an addiction to alcohol, which effects his work and also experiments with other drugs as well. 

Yes, McCarthy also discusses working on the various movies he starred in and with other actors, directors, etc. he worked with too. He also discussed how he wasn't very good at giving interviews and so on... But I found this part of his memoir to be uninteresting.

Below is the summary for Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy from Amazon:

Fans of Patti Smith's Just Kids and Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends will love this beautifully written, entertaining, and emotionally honest memoir by an actor, director, and author who found his start as an 80s Brat pack member.

Most people know Andrew McCarthy from his movie roles in Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, Weekend at Bernie's, and Less than Zero, and as a charter member of Hollywood's Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heartthrobs included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, and has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture.

In his memoir Brat: An '80s Story, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life in these pages, from scoring loose 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.

Filled with personal revelations of innocence lost to heady days in Hollywood with John Hughes and an iconic cast of characters, Brat is a surprising and intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.
I am giving Brat: An 80s Story by Andrew McCarthy a rating of 1.5 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!

5 comments:

  1. Years ago I read a book by Jenny Colgan called "Looking for Andrew McCarthy". It was in my beginnings of reading English novels and it was a very low level chick lit but it was quite funny. I might have been interested in this book but I guess I give it a miss.

    Thanks for the review.

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    1. Funny, but I accidentally bumped into a copy of Jenny Colgan's novel, "Looking for Andrew McCarthy". Maybe I'll buy it some day.

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    2. Just don't expect too much. It was a ery easy, very simple read.

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  2. No, thank you! Life is too short to spend time on this book.

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    1. I need to DNF bad/boring books more often than I do! This book wasn't for me, but it seems to be well received/rated on Amazon.

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