Sonny Boy

Al Pacino's memoir reads exactly like its subject talks: digressive, self-interrupting, more interested in a good story than in getting from A to B. Critics have been fairly unanimous that the structure is loose to a fault — anecdotes trail off before landing a point, and the chronological sweep from a rough South Bronx childhood to Method-acting stardom sometimes feels like a highlight reel rather than an examined life. The starkest gap: Beverly D'Angelo, mother of his twins, appears late and mostly in the context of custody logistics, with almost no account of the relationship itself. And yet the voice carries it — Pacino's evident submission to "Pacino the actor" as a kind of separate persona he's spent decades serving turns out to be the book's most interesting throughline, even when the storytelling around it wanders.