Almost Grown: A New York Memoir

Singer-songwriter Malin debuts with a gritty chronicle of his artistic coming-of-age. Born to 22-year-old parents in 1967 Queens, Malin recounts a turbulent but loving childhood shaped by music and instability. After his mother took Malin and his sister to live with their grandparents to escape their father’s alcoholic outbursts, Malin channeled his restless energy into punk music, forming the band Heart Attack as a teenager and taking any gig he could land. Encounters with industry figures including Rick Rubin and Little Richard lend color to the account, as do run-ins with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer, and Bob Weir. Though Malin details a hard-partying milieu, he insists he was “too afraid to try drugs,” making him both a participant in and wary observer of late-20th-century New York City hedonism. The narrative is framed by Malin’s survival of a rare spinal stroke in 2023 that sent him to Buenos Aires for stem-cell therapy and arduous rehab—an ordeal that captures the resilience he displays several times throughout the memoir. Malin’s prose style is raw, and he loves a name-drop, but his affectionate portrait of a vanished New York and the community that sustained him will resonate with artistically minded readers. It’s a tuneful self-portrait. (Apr.)