A Way of Life, Like Any Other

The hero of Darcy O'Brien'sA Way of Life, Like Any Otheris 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 rightor wrongman, 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 storya novel that combines keen insight and devastating wit to hilarious and heartbreaking effect.

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.

Seamus Heaney’s first poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist, appeared forty years ago. Since then he has published poetry, criticism, and translations that have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.