Acid for the Children by Flea

Title: Acid for the Children

Author: Flea

Publisher: Headline 2019

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 390

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Spring TBR; 52 Book Club - Set in Australia

*In Acid for the Children, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years, spanning from Australia to the New York City suburbs to, finally, Los Angeles. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations, and occasional flights of fantasy, Flea deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician, and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and 80s come to gritty, glorious life, including the potential for fun, danger, mayhem, or inspiration that lurked around every corner. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists, and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness, and love. This left him open to the life-changing moment when he and his best friends, soul brothers, and partners-in-mischief came up with the idea to start their own band, which became the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Acid for the Children is the debut of a stunning new literary voice, whose prose is as witty, entertaining, and wildly unpredictable as the author himself. It’s a tenderly evocative coming-of-age story and a raucous love letter to the power of music and creativity from one of the most renowned musicians of our time.*

I was bored. Seriously, I just didn’t get into this book at all and felt apathy every time I needed to pick it up. At times, Flea got very full of his own importance and it spilled out into the text. I just couldn’t get myself interested in this book. Memoir is not my genre, and this one definitely didn’t hit for me at all.

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