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Child Star

Child Star

by Matt Thorne (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2003

    $6.58

  • Used

    Paperback 2004

    $4.40
Synopsis

Imagine if the most embarrassing moments of your adolescence had been filmed - and then shown to your parents. Imagine if your first love was a character in a real-life docu-drama - and your romance played out on-screen. Imagine if you were about to become famous - and you had to share it all with your psychopathic sister. This all happened to Gerald Wedmore, child celebrity, recording angel and now TEFL teacher with a load of loony flatmates. As an adult he's no longer a star and he's been sleepwalking through life for too long, trapped in the lost hopes of the past. Now it is time to grow up, find a girl, change his sheets and do something about his life. CHILD STAR is a novel about love, friendship, different types of fame, and the family. Matt returns to stunning form with a page-turning novel in the vein of EIGHT MINUTES IDLE. Matt's absurdist quirky humour is brought to the fore (plenty of laugh-out-loud gags) and he uses pop music (of the 80s and later, Indie) brilliantly as a sound-track to events.

$6.58

Save:$6.13 (48%)

Quantity

3 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 320
 Publisher: W&N
Published: 10 Apr 2003
ISBN 10: 0297829084
ISBN 13: 9780297829089
Book Overview: High profile celebrity author. 10,000 copies of DREAMING OF STRANGERS sold to date. PICTURES OF YOU reprinted in paperback after three weeks with 8,500 copies sold to date. Backlist has been repackaged in a striking and appealing new series style. 'Fast-paced, farcical and full of sex, Thorne's entertaining slice of contemporary London life is a typically straight story written with the sort of crisp dialogue and description-less scene changes we have come to expect' - Observer

Media Reviews
RadioNIGHTWAVES (BBC RADIO 3), 28th March. Matt was joined by novelist Andrew O'Hagan for discussion on the phenomena of the child star InterviewsTIME OUT (2 April) - a 'discussion' with Matt and Andrew O'HaganANGEL MAGAZINE - a feature which ran on World Book DaySCOTLAND ON SUNDAY (6 April) - interview Events:Edinburgh (24 August)Vox 'n' Roll reading, with Ben Richards, on 19th MarchICA on 30 April, with Melvyn Burgess and Julie Myerson. 'Matt Thorne conveys Gerald's angst in a fresh, insouciant style. His lively narrative never slackens, littered with endless references to pop culture. This is his best book so far.'Charlie Campbell, LITERARY REVIEW 'Child Star is a sharp, social comedy.'Hugo Barnacle, SUNDAY TIMES 'Dark, funny and surprising.'Tim Teeman, TIMES 'Thorne has added a dimension to his fiction which is all the better for it.'Alfred Hickling, GUARDIAN '[a] breezy, absorbing novel...entertaining, atmospheric...The realistic surface of Thorne's fiction is a pleasure in itself, but its substance stays with you long after his everyday detail fades away.'William Cook, THE INDEPENDENT 'His lucid, unadorned prose is well suited to exposing the pretentions of celebrity culture, and Thorne details the lives of his dysfunctional moderns with compassion.'Oliver Robinson, THE OBSERVER '...it is as a study of a single character that CHILD STAR really excells...In the annals of forgettable men, Gerald Wedmore, 25-year-old has-been, will stay with you for some time.'Benji Wilson, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY '...an interesting novel, with some strong social themes...[and] a sharp polemical edge.'Julia Flynn, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Thorne is an intelligent writer; the chapters thatmove between frantic past and doleful present are well handled and there aresome exquisite moments of sadness in the moribund silences of Gerald's life.'Royce Mahawatte, TLS 'Compelling...a great protagonist.'Susan Corrigan, I-D MAGAZINE 'Humorous yet poignent, this is certainly a novel for our times.'WATERSTONE'S BOOKS QUARTERLY 'The plot is great.'BIG ISSUE 'Thorne maintains a lively pace.'Chris Hall, TIME OUT 'In a sophisticated book - it is the writer's fifth - Thorne manages to take a side swipe at the glut of dull celeb-biogsnow on the shelves, freeze-frame today's obsession with 'reality' and ponderwhy the craving and passion we have for our 15 minutes of fame is an all-consuming one.'Dave Windass, BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH '...this sparky, witty novelexamines the consequences of fame at an early age.'George Byrne, EVENING HERALD (DUBLIN) Reviews in THE DAILY MAIL and METRO and mentions in THE TIMES and THE MIRROR. CHILD STAR is number 6 in the top 10 books in HEAT magazine (12-18 April), a 'must read' in TATLER and an 'In The News' title in the SUNDAY TIMES (8.6.03) We've also had some fantastic advance quotes:'Being immersed in a Matt Thorne novel makes me doubt the solidarity of daily life. CHILD STARis his best book yet: as idiosyncratically stylish as the finest of his previous work, but with a broader reach, a maturer tone, an impressive complexityof structure, and a real and unsettling psychological depth.'Sarah Waters 'Matt Thorne is the laureate of a very modern brand of dysfunction, charting the gruesome territory of burgeoning manhood with anger, panache and laconic precision. For those who indulge in any kind of nostalgia for their adolescent years, here is the antidote.'Liz Jensen 'Matt Thorne invites us into his world with such confident and compelling storytelling that the reader is gripped until the final full stop.'Lana Citron 'a skilful, funny and moving evocationof pubescence and a judicious stitch up of the world of television soaps. Why he wasn't on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list is beyong me. He's almost the only twentysomething writer to have carved out a territory that's uniquely his.'Tibor Fischer, A
Author Bio
Matt Thorne lives in Stoke Newington with his wife. He's a full-time writer and book reviewer. He co-edited the controversial NEW PURITANS ANTHOLOGY along with his partner in crime, Nicolas Blincoe.