Product Description

Like Byron, John Dart, poet and bookshop assistant, wakes up one morning and finds himself, if not quite famous, then the next best thing: in bed with someone famous.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #306747 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Dart is a penniless poet, author of The Failed Stone (98 copies sold). He works in a London bookshop with a man who writes pornography about mermaids (think about it). He has a brittle girlfriend named Petra, who helpfully complements their lovemaking with lurid fantasies about dreadlocked delivery men. But then John's world flips upside down when he has a brief fling with Lee Montana, the world's most famous woman, in town to promote her book (more than 98 copies sold), and the Evening Standard flashes their embrace across page 3. Although everything seems to right itself, John starts to doubt his love for Petra, and when Lee reappears to whisk him off to St Tropez, he's not going to resist. It's clear which side Gill wishes his bread were buttered: his account of a service station clientele as "the gormless, dispossessed drifting of England on the move" is both brilliantly accurate and devastatingly heartless. He seems much happier at home with Lee Montana, conjuring convincingly a "parallel Alice universe" that is the natural habitat of celebrity. And though the final pages self consciously play out a battle between Greek destiny and Hollywood happy endings, Starcrossed is an engaging, pacy novel delivered with considerable panache.--Alan Stewart

From the Back Cover
Like Byron, John Dart, poet and bookshop assistant, wakes up one morning and finds himself, if not quite famous, then the next best thing: in bed with someone famous.

About the Author
A A Gill
A.A. Gill was born in Edinburgh in 1954 and studied at the Slade School of Art. He is the restaurant and television critic for The Sunday Times, for whom he also writes a weekly opinion column. He is the author of two novels, Sap Rising and Starcrossed, and two restaurant biographies, The Ivy Cookbook and Le Caprice. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Stick to being a critic
Mr. Gill, you are the most pertinent, on-the-button critic of TV and restaurants - two Gods of our times. When you get the bit between your teeth your combination of strongly-held, well-argued thoughts cannot be beaten. My wife knows when I'm reading your articles because I laugh, frequently, out loud. I wish I had one tenth of your talent. So why write fiction that's a schoolboy's wet dream?... Nice stories, some good plot diversions, a smorgasbord of culture and sexual fantasies. But why not write a fiction covering something that makes you angry? Or makes a point? That builds on your depth of knowledge about popular and ancient culture, or the miscegenation of culinary habits? Maybe not Shakespeare, but something that doesn't sit, however uneasily, on the fastfood shelves of airport bookracks. Use your prodigious talent for something a little more complex, or stick to being The Critic.

Entertaining
There is a vague possibility that this could be complete trash pretending to be ironic, but I believe that, like faith needs a doubt, this question is purposefully placed by the author. The sex scenes are deliberately "schoolboy", the observations are sharp, the underlying criticism sizzles. No-one is left untouched, Gill has a way of reassuring us that other people think the same things, feel the same emotions, and then turns it around completely. Very compelling. I may feel like a wash when I've finished it, but is that his fault or mine?

Disappointing when compared to his journalistic work
I came to this book because I very much enjoy Gill's work as a restaurant critic. He is pithy and insightful and usually very amusing. This had brief glimpses of those qualities, but too brief, alas. I thought the plot was juvenile in the extreme and the descriptions of the poverty stricken underclass was positively Dickensian. Nobody I know, even at their poorest, still sleeps on nylon sheets for God's sake. If he had tempered his desire to exaggerate the gap between the haves and have nots and made it realistic rather than ridiculous it would have been a much better read.