BRAT: An '80s Story

Description

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 favour 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. 'Wit, wisdom, and a depth of honesty that resonates to your core' Demi Moore 'Explores masculinity, success, the dangers of fame, ambition and cigarettes in an elegant and humorous coming of age story' Candace Bushnell 'Absorbing, thoughtful, and sometimes painfully honest ... a fascinating read' Jay McInerney 'A riveting portrait of the artist as a young man' Publishers Weekly

Since starring in movies like Pretty in Pink, St Elmo's Fire and Less Than Zero, ANDREW McCARTHY has become a director, an award-winning travel writer and a bestselling author. He has directed more than eighty hours of television, including Orange Is the New Black, The Blacklist, Gossip Girl and many others. For a dozen years he served as editor at large at National Geographic Traveler and his award-winning travel writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic and TIME. He is the author of a travel memoir, The Longest Way Home, and a young-adult novel, Just Fly Away, both New York Times bestsellers.