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Child Star will be
many readers' first introduction to Matt
Thorne, and its heavily awkward style seems
suited to a clumsy first novel, not the work
of an experienced writer. Still, the
confessional/truth-is-fiction style of this
novel could excuse anyone for thinking the
same thing.
This book poses as the memoirs of Gerald, a
child television actor chosen to star in an
experimental social docudrama, but is really
about Gerald looking back at his childhood
and coming to terms with the fact that
nothing in his adult life has ever measured
up to his experience on the programme.
Thorne intersperses scenes from Gerald's
childhood, which chronicles the auditions,
rehearsals and recordings for "All Right
Now", and his parents' separation, with
scenes from his present, tracing a failed
relationship with his girlfriend of eight
years, his attempts to stabilize his life,
and a trip to New York to visit an old
friend.
Nicholas, the dramaturge who's putting the
shows together talks a lot about dramatic
tension, but unfortunately Thorne fails to
follow his lesson, and the book seems to
drift along like rain seeping through the
ceiling, instead of flowing nicely with
compelling tides and currents. You never
really get the sense that there's anything
wrong with Gerald, with his parents, or with
his family (descriptions of his
"psychopathic" sister Erica are hinted at
but never really followed through). The
style is more that of "tell" and not "show",
and this proves frustrating for any reader,
no matter how patient.
Instead of a really memorable look at a
boy's unusual experience of being on TV,
this is more of a somewhat vaguely
thought-out story with snips of pop music,
pop culture, and pop psychology thrown in.
Gerald's adult musings on the meaning and
nature of life seem facile, almost trite,
and you'll think, "I thought that when I was
twelve - why is he thinking this at the age
of twenty-three?"
On the other hand, his observations and
feelings as a thirteen year old are too
perceptive, too coherent and too eloquent to
be realistic.
The main relationship in the book is not the
one between Gerald and his long-term
girlfriend, or even Gerald and his best
friend Sally, but between Gerald and his
co-star Perdita. She's one year older than
him and attractive, and Gerald falls
hopelessly for her, but this is a feeling
that is never reciprocated. Predictably,
Gerald and Perdita are reunited many years
later, but in a scenario that is bizarre and
seems like it's been tacked onto the end of
the book just to assuage the reader's
curiosity about "what might have been". And
yet Thorne brings out a true "what might
have been", offering us something of an
ending similar to Ian McEwan's Atonement
but far inferior in quality.
Thorne sometimes does a good job of
capturing the energy and impulsiveness of
the other children on the show. He has a
keen eye for the strategies and
manipulations of children as they work to
gain the upper hand on each other and the
adults around them, and many times these
descriptions ring true to life. There is
still the feeling, though, that Thorne
observed many of these moments at random
periods of his life and decided to file them
away for later, when he wrote a big novel
some time later.
One such moment, which still has its funny
side, is when one of the boys on the show,
Peter, tells Gerald's sister Erica that "my
dad told me that love hurts". Erica replies,
"Like this?" and kicks him hard in the
shins.
The moments where Gerald comments on the
process he's undergoing to write the book
are unbearably precious and the book could
easily have done without them. In all you
will find this book one you can't put down,
but only because you're waiting for
something big to happen, and when you reach
the last page and it never does, you'll be
tempted to wish you'd never seen the show.
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