Book Summary and Reviews of A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien

A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien

A Way of Life, Like Any Other

by Darcy O'Brien

  • Published:
  • Jan 1978, 149 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The hero of Darcy O'Brien's A Way of Life, Like Any Other is a child of Hollywood, and once his life was a glittery dream.

His father starred in Westerns. His mother was a goddess of the silver screen. The family enjoyed the high life on their estate, Casa Fiesta. But his parents' careers have crashed since then, and their marriage has broken up too.

Lovesick and sex-crazed, the mother sets out on an intercontinental quest for the rightâ or wrongâ man, while her mild-mannered but manipulative former husband clings to his memories in California. And their teenage son? How he struggles both to keep faith with his family and to get by himself, and what in the end he must do to break free, makes for a classic coming-of-age storyâ a novel that combines keen insight and devastating wit to hilarious and heartbreaking effect.

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This information about A Way of Life, Like Any Other was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Darcy O'Brien

Darcy O'Brien (1939-1998) was born in Los Angeles, the son of the movie stars George O'Brien and Marguerite Churchill. He attended Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at the University of Tulsa. O'Brien's first novel, A Way of Life, Like Any Other, won the PEN/Hemingway award. His books include the novels The Silver Spooner and Margaret in Hollywood, critical studies of James Joyce and Patrick Kavanagh, and several other works of nonfiction, among themTwo of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers and The Hidden Pope.

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