Narrator Noah Galvin sounds exactly like the insecure, self-deprecating, intense young man who is at the center of this novel. Charlie works as a personal assistant for an aging movie star who is now a bestselling author. Kathi Kannon is a train wreck. She doesn’t know whether she needs socks, doesn’t remember whether or not knows Gene Hackman. Charlie is expected to have all the answers for her employer, who became a cultural icon for her performance as Priestess Talara in a world-famous sci-fi film. Galvin’s performance is youthful, believable, and underplayed, even as the incidents grow more outrageous. The story was inspired by the author’s experiences as Carrie Fisher’s assistant. Galvin delivers the growing friendship, humor, tenderness, and absolute craziness of Charlie’s three years with the film icon. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
A Star Is Bored: A Novel
Narrated by Noah Galvin
Byron LaneUnabridged — 11 hours, 38 minutes
A Star Is Bored: A Novel
Narrated by Noah Galvin
Byron LaneUnabridged — 11 hours, 38 minutes
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Overview
This program is read by Noah Galvin, who starred in The Good Doctor, Dear Evan Hansen, The Real O'Neals, and Booksmart.
"A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender."
- Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six
People Magazine Best Book of Summer 2020 - Named a Must-Read Summer book by Town & Country - Named One of the 14 Best Books of Summer 2020 by Harper's Bazaar - One of Library Journal's 2020 "Titles to Watch" - One of the 30 Best Beach Reads According to Parade Magazine
The Devil Wears Prada meets Postcards From the Edge in a hilariously heartfelt novel influenced in part by the author's time assisting Carrie Fisher.
Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for an insane job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine's worst dressed list. She needs an assistant. He needs a hero.
Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and an award winning actress, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She's also known in another role: crazy. Admittedly so. Famously so. Fabulously so, as Charlie quickly discovers.
Their three year odyssey is filled with late night shopping sprees, last minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows, Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own leading role?
Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane's A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
Editorial Reviews
03/09/2020
Lane debuts with a fizzy roman à clef about a celebrity assistant, playfully alluding to his experience working for the late actor Carrie Fisher. Lane begins with Charlie Besson’s job interview, “panicked and parked outside the estate of Hollywood royalty.” The job is an assistant to Kathi Kannon, famous for playing the beloved Priestess Talara in the science fiction epic Nova Quest (a thinly veiled Star Wars). Charlie, who left behind a dull career as a local TV news writer to work for Kathi, narrates his process of learning the ropes of being an assistant, while attempting to heal from a pattern of self-destructive drinking and unprotected sex. Charlie travels with Kathi, helps her cope with addiction, and develops a bond with his boss, earning endearing nicknames like Cockring and Stepson. Lane brings wit and tenderness to Kathi’s mostly acerbic personality, and her attachment to Charlie is potent and palpable. As Charlie grapples with finding his passion and place in the world, Kathi tells him, “I’m giving you the best shit to write about… this will all be funny one day,” and he latches on to Kathi as his “superpower,” to the frustration and bemusement of the men he dates. If any of this were true (a note from Lane’s attorney says otherwise), Lane’s affecting tale would show how the real Charlie found his own superpower—as a novelist. (July)
"Wildly funny and irreverent... Lane’s writing lifts the novel far above its gossamer Hollywood setting, suffusing [the novel] with a complex sensitivity."
— The New York Times Book Review
"The fun summer read so many of us are craving."
— USA Today
"A sweet goodbye and an ode to friendship... it delights"
— NY Post
"Ingenious and very droll... Lane turns out to be such a good writer, so funny and rapier sharp...He's made a fascinating character out of his perennially bored star, a pill-popping, foul-mouthed creature at once cynical and sentimental, self-loving and self-hating, with a lust for life and a self-destructive streak as wide as Santa Monica Boulevard... [Lane] gives us the best of both worlds, savage satire leavened with compassion...This reader was rarely bored."
— L.A. Times
“With prose in turns incandescent and uproariously funny, as well as poignantly tender and sweet, Lane’s novel is a love letter, not only to Carrie Fisher, but also to the ridiculous, bizarre and oft-magical world of Hollywood.”
— Variety
"Carrie Fisher's spirit animates this funny, dishy, and deeply affectionate roman à clef by her former personal assistant. The force is with him."
— People "Must-Reads for Summer"
"Lane debuts with a fizzy roman à clef about a celebrity assistant, playfully alluding to his experience working for the late actor Carrie Fisher. Lane begins with Charlie Besson’s job interview...an assistant to Kathi Kannon, famous for playing the beloved Priestess Talara in the science fiction epic Nova Quest. Lane brings wit and tenderness to Kathi’s mostly acerbic personality, and her attachment to Charlie is potent and palpable... Lane’s affecting tale would show how the real Charlie found his own superpower—as a novelist."
— Publishers Weekly
"Aside from being laugh out loud funny, brazen, charming and exquisitely observed, ASIB is romantic, soulful and filled with tender sweetness. For those of us who knew Carrie and Byron it all brings back chokingly funny and necessarily sad memories of a uniquely beautiful and deranged ménage, but it will make every reader feel at home and a part of it too."
— Stephen Fry
“I’m in love with this hearty story of a hilarious Hollywood friendship. It’s fierce and funny and will warm your heart in these often frigid times. This is some queer chicken noodle soup for my soul, honey.”
— Jonathan Van Ness, New York Times bestselling author of Over the Top
"I didn't go into this expecting a love story, but the one here between a Hollywood assistant and his famous, hilarious and deeply lonely boss came very close to breaking my heart.”
— Julia Claiborne Johnson, bestselling author of Be Frank With Me
"Byron Lane has written a book that will touch you on so many levels. I was prepared for the laughs, but didn't expect the poignant story of a relationship both difficult and wonderful at the same time. A terrific read."
— Laurie Gelman, bestselling author of Class Mom and You've Been Volunteered
"A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender. The pitch-perfect absurdity and sharp heartbreak of this story come to life so vividly that the last page left me aching. Completely outrageous and positively lovely."
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six
★ 06/01/2020
DEBUT Thinly veiled stories of the rich and famous have always been popular; Lane's new roman à clef about his time as actress/writer Carrie Fisher's personal assistant is sure to make a splash. Struggling writer Charlie Besson gets a job working for Hollywood icon Kathi Kannon, who immediately christens him "Cockring." Things get even crazier from there. Charlie lost his mother as a child, he's gay, and his relationship with his abusive father is fraught. Kathi is a bipolar drug addict who needs to be closely monitored, and she's lonely. Kathi and Charlie develop a strong bond. He makes sure she takes her meds, takes her wherever she wants to go, and listens to her. She becomes almost a mother figure to Charlie. It is not always clear who is helping whom more, but things are not as idyllic as Charlie wants to believe. Told with empathy, charm, and a lot of humor, Lane's look at celebrity life is surprisingly relatable—he may soon find himself in need of a personal assistant. VERDICT A peek inside the wacky life of beloved Hollywood royalty, this debut novel should have wide appeal. Read-alikes include Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada and Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde.—Stacy Alesi, Eugene M. & Christine E. Lynn Lib., Lynn Univ., Boca Raton, FL
Narrator Noah Galvin sounds exactly like the insecure, self-deprecating, intense young man who is at the center of this novel. Charlie works as a personal assistant for an aging movie star who is now a bestselling author. Kathi Kannon is a train wreck. She doesn’t know whether she needs socks, doesn’t remember whether or not knows Gene Hackman. Charlie is expected to have all the answers for her employer, who became a cultural icon for her performance as Priestess Talara in a world-famous sci-fi film. Galvin’s performance is youthful, believable, and underplayed, even as the incidents grow more outrageous. The story was inspired by the author’s experiences as Carrie Fisher’s assistant. Galvin delivers the growing friendship, humor, tenderness, and absolute craziness of Charlie’s three years with the film icon. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
2020-03-15
In the dynamic partnership that is Hollywood icon and celebrity assistant, who needs whom more?
This debut novel, based loosely on the author’s own experiences as a celebrity assistant, quickly establishes normalcy as a fluid concept. Normal for Charlie, a news writer in LA, is defined by working the graveyard shift and regularly contemplating suicide. Open to any opportunity to hit reset on his life, he takes a lead from intolerable executive assistant Bruce, whom he met at a gay bar and now hate-follows on social media. Kathi Kannon, star of cult-favorite film Nova Quest, is looking for an assistant. Charlie soon finds himself far outside his comfort zone, buzzing the intercom of his childhood idol. His call is answered with a curt “HURRY!” and the gate opens to his new life. Kathi’s world is, in a word, chaos, and Charlie—now dubbed rather salaciously as Cockring—is tasked with establishing a routine. As in: “feed her, water her, medicate her.” Turns out, Charlie was not left with an Assistant Bible, the invaluable tool that helps new assistants navigate a life to which they could never relate. Deciphering Kathi is a 24-hour task (“KATHI: I urgently need teeth splinter barfs….ME: Toothpicks, you need toothpicks?...KATHI: Horble twat”), and their dynamic will be as amusing for the reader as it is all-consuming for Charlie. Duality is a key theme of this relationship, as Kathi not-so-subtly becomes a second mother figure to Charlie after helping him realize the absurd tragedy of his childhood (“[Your mom] died in a fucking church?!”). At the same time, entranced by Kathi's Hollywood shine, Charlie rationalizes the absurdity in her daily life in a way that leaves him blind to her shadows. Kathi and Charlie’s story is one of addiction—mostly to other people and what they can add to your life. Their story is also deeply human, relatable in the most unrelatable way. Bravo to Lane, who deftly navigates the complexity of inner and outer lives as well as the many facets of normal. Add this to the Assistant Bible: A famous person’s boredom is another person’s saving grace.
Larger-than-life characters drive this charming, hilarious, and memorable debut.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940177171470 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 07/28/2020 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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