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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Teenage Kicks, 7 April 2007
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.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Gritty Pop Culture Love Story , 2 Oct 2006
Sampson is definitely back in the groove with Stars are Stars.
What he does particularly well here is weave the sounds and political context of 70's inner-city Liverpool with the optimism (and subsequent crushing cynicism) of young love.
One of the sub-themes is the real story of Eric's - a Liverpool club which has had enduring influence on contemporary music in the UK and elsewhere - this is welcome given the comparative lack of coverage that Eric's has had when compared, for example, with Manchester's Hacienda.
Overall a very enjoyable book.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sordide Sentimental - , 22 Aug 2006
Stars are Stars marks a return to form for Liverpool's Kevin Sampson, descriptions of him as a scouse Irvine Welsh are lazy and somewhat disingenuious.
Indeed we are 'Lucky' to be reading the completed book - In 2005 Sampson nearly became one of the Dead Souls when a freak DIY accident put him up against an full blast electrical current which should have been in Isolation.
Thankfully an Atrocity Exhibition was avoided but Sampson was seriously hurt and and as a New dawn fades we get his latest work. I don't know whether there was something in the transmission of the electricity but this book would be a candidate for his best work, were it not for the fact that "Powder" won my heart and Soul and These Days he would have to write something with real Insight for me to Pass Over it as the definitive Sampson article.
Writing may be a means to an end for the ex manager of The Farm but the novelty has not worn off. 'Stars' has everything, great musical references, strong characters and a great storyline. Young working class Danny - a gifted artist dreams of escaping to Art School, he has talent beyond words, but art college is for the middle class wools and wierdo's so its going to be an effort. He falls in love, and Sampson desribes beautifully that young love were everything is one long shagathon discussion star gazing beauty pain torture soundtrack. She is a middle class left winger. Its liverpool in the bitter decades, the rise of Thatcher and the destruction of a beautiful city to smack, unemployment, poverty and despair. Its a wilderness, Toxteth burns as the oppressed of L8 defy the state and run the bizzies back into town.
Danny takes his girl to Paris to see his beloved Joy Division - and you know something must break, as love will tear us apart bleeds from the speakers and Ian Curtis hotfoots it home to an appointment with a rope, danny is betrayed by the one thing he cherishes and adores. Its a love Excercise One will never forget. She's Lost Control and he's lost the one thing of worth in his life.
But in the Shadowplay of smacked up youth unemployment danny jetisons all his reference points - music, clothes, art and joins the legion chasing the dragon, robbing, chancing.
Sampson has obviously been re-reading the original 'skinhead / suedehead books of the 70's or maybe some Stewart Home. the violence and the sex are more knowing than before.
This is a great read, pacy, compassionate, articulate.
I should say more but i will give it twenty four hours and see what the response is. this is one of the new order not to be mistaken for the other two - its some factory.
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