by Jim Carroll

isbn: 0140100180
subject: Nonfiction, Biography
finished: 4/30/1999

This is a coming-of-age story, composed of excerpts from Jim Carroll's diary, written during his young adulthood on the streets of New York City. The earlier entries are crude, but extremely funny -- Carroll and his basketball teammates are constantly getting into trouble of one kind or another as they move through the seedier side of mid-60's NYC. The later entries are sadder, and much less funny; Carroll's small heroin habit becomes a full-fledged addiction and he resorts to increasingly desperate measures to find the money to buy drugs. Throughout the book, his flair for accurately describing people and situations is apparent. This was a good read, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Carroll's work.