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Mar. 14th, 2014 02:26 pmSo, somewhere, at some point, I read an article about this book called A Way Of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien. And something in that article drove me to get the book from the library, but by god, I don't know why or how.
A Way Of Life, Like Any Other is a sort of California-themed Catcher In The Rye, though apparently O'Brien is fictionalizing his own childhood, so I suppose it could be called a Catcher-esque autobiography. It follows our unnamed narrator from childhood through to his final year of high school, as the child of two fading Golden Age Hollywood stars. It was written in 1977 but covers mainly the late forties and fifties, though there's no real date touchstones other than McCarthyism and the precursors to the sexual revolution.
( A Way Of Life, Like Any Other )
Final Verdict: The book is a rather bland depiction of mid-century life among the noveau riche of Hollywood. There's nothing much to recommend it; every character enters as reasonably likeable and departs as essentially terrible.
A Way Of Life, Like Any Other is a sort of California-themed Catcher In The Rye, though apparently O'Brien is fictionalizing his own childhood, so I suppose it could be called a Catcher-esque autobiography. It follows our unnamed narrator from childhood through to his final year of high school, as the child of two fading Golden Age Hollywood stars. It was written in 1977 but covers mainly the late forties and fifties, though there's no real date touchstones other than McCarthyism and the precursors to the sexual revolution.
( A Way Of Life, Like Any Other )
Final Verdict: The book is a rather bland depiction of mid-century life among the noveau riche of Hollywood. There's nothing much to recommend it; every character enters as reasonably likeable and departs as essentially terrible.
