Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108483 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Brian Reade, The Mirror
"Poignant, exciting and beautifully observed"

Independent on Sunday, 11/09/06
'Buzzing with post-punk energy and righteous indignation'

Time Out
"'Stars are Stars' has a solid emotional core"

Customer Reviews

Swept away
I love books that capture the sorts of emotions and events that whizz past you when you're young, because you're too busy experiencing them spend time writing them down.

Stars are Stars follows Danny May, a 15 year old from Toxteth who dreams of going to Liverpool Art School. He meets Nicole, a politically active middle class girl and the two of them embark on what they believe to be a bohemian love affair.

Falling in love when you're young, you think that no one's ever felt like this before, and that youthful arrogance is captured perfectly in Danny a d Nicole's conversations and affectations, which are carried out in dive bars and clubs in Liverpool and in the streets of Paris.

Their love story may be the main storyline, but politics and music feature heavily too. Bowie, Psychedelic Furs, The Bunnymen, Devo all feature and unusually for a book that mentions real bands and events (Ian Curtis' suicide) they crop up very naturally, that doesn't feel like Sampson is trying too hard to be cool.

Then comes the politics...from hope to despair in five years, here comes Mrs Thatcher smashing and grabbing, all whilst keeping her hair in that unworldly helmet. In 1980, Danny receives the devastating news that the Art School's funding has been withdrawn by the new Tory government, and stops painting, starts taking drugs and robbing from the people he loves.

Danny's descent allays with the massively violent Toxteth riots, which are described in vivid detail, just like his paintings which bookend this story.

This story swept me up; due to the colour and texture that Sampson gives his characters and the situations they are born into and fail to get out of.

My only criticism would be that whilst Nicole is out of the story, and Danny gets involved in photographing the riots, it still feels real, but the way they meet up again in Wales, did feel a little contrived, but it's something that can be overlooked as this is a stunning book, which is well written, exciting, thought provoking and crystallises a very strange and turbulent time in British history, that is made human with the story of Danny May.

An arresting portrayal of 'old' Liverpool
Inflated by an orgy of EU money, drugs proceeds and Premier League salaries, the days when Liverpool was a byword for urban and moral degradation now seem long part of our past. Stars are Stars is an ambitious depiction of life in the city in the late-1970s and early 1980s, when, to the outside world it appeared to be on its knees, crippled as it was by unemployment and the Toxteth Riots. Kevin Sampson captures some of this decline, but shows the counterpoint: while the rest of the World thought Liverpool was dying, it was actually undergoing a cultural and sporting renaissance. Although football takes a backseat, the book hums along to a soundtrack of Eric's nightclub, Echo and the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes; while Sampson captures the frenetic energy that reverberated from the streets.

Indeed the book fizzes with an energy which is in one sense is its driving force, in another is its main weakness. Sampson's prose does capture something of the fecklessness and energy of youth, but there are times when this becomes too much, when you want to switch off and for the author to take a more languid pace. Non-Scousers may struggle with his placing of local slang into his prose and it was something that I found particularly irritating -- and I am a son of the city. There's plenty of sex in Stars are Stars, told in gleeful, gratuitous, almost chauvinistic tones. In fact, Sampson could probably fill the Literary Review's infamous Bad Sex in Fiction Award several times over with Stars Are Stars.

While Sampson has a good ear for conversation, Nicole, the book's heroine doesn't half come across as an irritating `wool' (although, maybe that's his intention); while Danny May, its protagonist, can seem over-the-top, like some sort of dreadful Scouse stereotype. I found myself disliking both at various places in the book.

These, however, are generally minor gripes in what must be considered a triumph. Certainly I cannot think of a more evocative depiction of Liverpool in fiction; while Sampson's writing about the city in general is amongst the finest I have read in any form. Nowhere have I read finer passages on the Toxteth Riots, a misunderstood and oft-neglected part of modern British history.

At its heart is a love story, which is every bit as powerful as those told by more revered `literary types' like Ian McEwan and Sebastian Faulks. Indeed despite all my reservations it's a good read and highly recommended for anyone with even the vaguest interest or connection to Liverpool.

Teenage Kicks
I've read five of Sampson's novels, and this is his most heartfelt to date. Set in Liverpool from 1976-81, the story follows Danny, an energetic working-class boy with a talent for sketching and painting. We meet him as a youth hustling a pound here and there doing portraits in dockside bars and whorehouses, intent on saving up for the latest records, tasty clothes, and the Liverpool School of Art. Living in Toxteth with his hard working mother and harpy sisters, he eschews the football and thievery that most of his contemporaries are into. Instead, he's trying desperately to make himself into an Artist with a capital A, even though he's not really sure what that means.

One day Danny meets and falls instantly in love with Nicole, a middle-class girl from the countryside who's in town at university doing the radical left-wing student thing. She is likewise smitten, and the book is about their relationship, which swings from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows, and on to a truly fitting ending (which is well foreshadowed in the opening chapter). Through the couple, Sampson captures the state of perpetual possibility and excitement that teenagers live in. Although at times Danny's description of his feelings and their relationship veer into overripe sentimentality and mushiness, it's exactly the right tone. The happy fire of one's first relationship -- before one's been burned or betrayed -- is precisely captured. However, as the story progresses, Danny spends more and more time dwelling on the bad parts of the relationship, and the reader can see the iceberg looming ahead.

At the same time, Sampson provides a rich backdrop to the intense love story. Liverpool was a central part of the post-punk scene, and with a title borrowed from the Echo and the Bunnymen song, one shouldn't be surprised to find music playing a large role. Danny and Nicole's first "date" involves seeing Wire play at legendary club Eric's, their first major argument revolves around going to the also legendary 1978 Rock Against Racism concert, and a somewhat less legendary Joy Division show in Paris becomes the catalyst for their breakup. Indeed, Joy Division looms rather large in the book, as they immediately become Danny's favorite band, and readers familiar with "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and Ian Curtis' suicide will doubtless read the ominous foreshadowing on the wall.

Hand in hand with the musical backdrop is the volatile political scene, as Nicole rails against the ascendancy of Margaret Thatcher to Danny's general disinterest. Sampson does a nice job of using Nicole to show the overearnestness of the left-wing and Danny to show the dangers of political apathy. For the political does indeed become personal for Danny, as the new government shuts down the art school, and the failing economy and rise of the right wing culminate in a night of rioting in his neighborhood. All of this combines to make the novel an ode to both to a specific time and place and the messy intensity of teenage love.