Is A Way of Life, Like Any Other Hollywood’s best coming-of-age tale?

Showbiz insider Darcy O’Brien’s story of a glittering world gone bad is narrated by an inimitable teen

At next month’s Bath literature festival, a panel will debate the coming-of-age novel, its talk of hormones and sudden self-awareness inspired by a 50-strong list of books that includes The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. Will Darcy O’Brien’s A Way of Life, Like Any Other perhaps get a mention? I doubt it: few novels as good as this one are as little known, even if the NYRB edition does come with a foreword by Seamus Heaney. But never mind. At least I now have an excuse to bang on about it here.

Salty's father persists in dressing like the cowboys he once played even as his girth makes this ridiculous

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