Stars Are Stars [Paperback]

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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