Jim Cullen, Review of Rob Lowe's "Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography" (Henry Holt, 2011)

About halfway through, the book loses some of its narrative momentum. Lowe spends far too much time on his debut movie, The Outsiders, though the glimpse into director Francis Ford Coppola's working style is intriguing. The sad truth is that on the whole, Lowe did not really live up to the enormous hype he generated, surely one factor in his descent into addiction and the notorious "sex tape" controversy that damaged his image. The great irony of his career is that his movie star looks notwithstanding, Lowe has enjoyed his greatest successes as a supporting player -- particularly in the Austin Powers movies and in The West Wing -- and it's to his credit that he recognized this and deployed his skills where they proved useful.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends is an entertaining read by a reflective man who has tried hard to make sense of his varied experiences. One finishes the book believing in Lowe's core decency, and that his default setting is to assume that you are his friend until you demonstrate otherwise. In a celebrity memoir genre where sympathy can often wear thin amid tedious detail and unwittingly damaging self-revelation, Lowe ends up looking pretty good.