REVIEW:

The quiet “It Boy” for nerd girls of a certain generation wrote a little memoir, and I’ve had a lovely parade down nostalgia lane since starting it.

Brat: An ‘80s Story could win a truth in advertising award for its spot-on title. Clearly it’s a not-so-subtle nod to Andrew McCarthy’s association with the “Brat Pack” moniker given to his cohort, but it also hones in on the time period of focus. This is not his full life story. It’s a reflection back on his acting days during the glorious Greed decade.

Want to know what New York acting classes were like back then? He’s got you covered. How did he land his most notorious roles? You’ll get the details. Care to find out what he’s been doing since then? Not gonna happen.

He also doesn’t spill much Tab… er, tea, about his costars. You get a taste, but it’s not a very juicy one. If you’re just in the mood for gossip, that itch ain’t gonna be scratched.

Brat gets a positive 3.5 stars from me and will be catalogued in my mind as “totally fine.” I just couldn’t rate it as highly as Rob Lowe’s surprisingly wonderful Stories I Only Tell My Friends. Now that’s a hidden gem I hope more people will discover, especially in the audiobook format that features his absolutely delightful narration.

Andrew McCarthy does the narration for An ‘80s Story too, which is also 100% fine. Does putting it that way make me a Brat?

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

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.