DNF at page 184.

But the ARC has made a fabulous door prop since March, and I think about it quite frequently resultantly.

I chose this book because in the acknowledgments of Steven Rowley’s book The Guncle, he accepts Byron Lane’s marriage proposal because Lane proposed to him in the acknowledgments section of this book. How cute is that? Anyway, on to the review:

Charlie is depressed and living without purpose. He interviews for a job as Kathi Kannon’s assistant and somehow gets the job, even though he has no idea how to be an assistant. Kathi is an older actress most known for starring as Priestess Talara in a hugely popular science fiction movie. She hasn’t worked in a while and she struggles with addiction and mental illness. Charlie has always been a huge fan of hers and working as her assistant is his dream job. But once he gets the job, he soon figures out it’s going to be a lot harder than he thought it would be.

Okay, so Lane used to be Carrie Fisher’s assistant in real-life and reading this book felt like reading his memoir of being her assistant. I think he probably wrote it as a novel instead out of respect to her because it’s clear in the book that Charlie loves Kathi with all his heart even though the relationship seems one-sided. I don’t think Lane would want anyone to think badly of Carrie Fisher.

Kathi lives on the same compound as her mother, Miss Gracie, (as Carrie did with her mother Debbie Reynolds) and Miss Gracie has the financial means to make sure that Kathi never hits rock bottom. She loves her daughter and wants to protect her but she’s actually not doing her any favors by being an enabler. Charlie’s main job seems to be making sure that Kathi still functions while she keeps doing drugs, mainly prescription painkillers, and making sure she stays on the medication that keeps her bipolar in check. He does his best to keep her from taking drugs but when there’s no rock bottom, it’s a lost cause.

I mostly enjoyed A Star is Bored but I did find myself wondering why Charlie loved Kathi so much when she didn’t really seem to care about him all that much. Right off the bat, he gives her his dead mother’s locket and seems to look up to her as a mother figure when she isn’t nurturing at all. After reading this book, it would be interesting to go back and reread Carrie Fisher’s memoirs to see how they match up. I don’t know if I have time for that though! ( )

In A STAR IS BORED, by Byron Lane, we meet Charlie, a young man struggling to find his place in the world, who ends up working for Kathi Kannon, an eccentric Hollywood icon who is known to be unstable. As Charlie and Kathi's hijinks become funnier and more extreme, the question becomes: Is the balance between control and insanity bringing them tighter or forcing them apart or both?
I haven't laughed as much at a book in a long time. While Lane very clearly states that this is a work of fiction and not Carrie Fisher, who he was an assistant for, it is clear that his time with her inspired him and the reader can't help but picture Carrie Fisher while reading the book. Lane is a natural storyteller, his ability to craft a setup, a punchline, a twist and another punchline is masterful. Visiting his personal life, full of internal growth and fluctuating dating life, provides a grounding for the reader to remind us of the real world, so when Charlie reenters Kathi's world, we appreciate the comic absurdity of her life even more. The ending sneaks up on you while laughing through a particularly crazy exploit and provides a rewarding conclusion.
In a time when brevity and laughter is at a premium, A STAR IS BORED can take you to a place where life is joy and discovery and a hope for a happy life for us all.
I received a copy of this book as part of a Goodreads Giveaway. ( )

3,5 stars.
It was hard for me to get used to the writing style. It's different and I'm not sure if I like it. The protagonist Charlie talks a lot to iPhone's virtual assistant Siri, which I guess is a metaphor as he himself is personal assistant to Kathi Kannon, a star he has idolized since childhood. Some parts are really hilarious - like the restaurant scene in Japan - and some parts are boring - like many things in real life are.
Charlie lost his mother when he was young and his father is overbearing. He is looking for a connection, a family of sorts. He analyses everything at length. Those parts could have been shorter overall. But the story is great, sad and funny at the same time.
Thank you NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for a copy of this book. ( )

"This is a work of fiction. Events, characters, and high crimes are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental, including names, places, weapons, and sexual acts. -My attorney"

I despise the idea of Celebrity but my brain still fixates on people. I first knew of Carrie Fisher at the end of 2015 and the way I remember 2016 is it being a whirlwind of Carrie and Star Wars.

The biggest thing Carrie opened my eyes to took a few years after everything else to fully process: ripping off your own life from your own self and stuffing it into your art. Its fine if you rob from reality and crudely incorporate it into fiction. It's like she gave me permission to do as I like, to take as I see fitting and put it into my own work without feeling like some kind of fraud for not making up everything anew.

Don't mean to harp quite so much about Carrie, but it's important in terms of how I interacted with this book. I've spent the past eight eight years obsessed with counteracting celebrity culture, with giving the recipient of parasocial affection their own agency, even if it's all in your head.

I went to a film festival screening of a documentary about Carrie, and then I read her diary entries in the form of a book and then watched movie adaptation (which became one of my all-time favorite movies) of a book she wrote that has many bits of her in it, and then I read another of her novels and I shut it halfway through and returned it to the library. And now this is seemingly the final, ultimate form of this blend between the celebrity and the page. Somebody else's perspective, inspired by their time with Carrie. It's not Carrie, it's a fictional character, but Carrie has her grasp all over it.

I find the subject matter, exploring the power imbalance that comes with this line of work, simply The Most intriguing thing to explore. I wanted Charlie and Kathi to be real friends, the Normal kind, but they could never be that, which is the joy and the tragedy of this story. They may love each other desperately, but there's a hierarchy set up, a bar of access between him and her. When he's not working, it's not possible to hang around her, no matter how dear he's become to her.

Humorous, absurd, but sad to imagine the texture of a life like this ( )