Book details

A Star Is Bored

A Novel

Author: Byron Lane

A Star Is Bored

A Star Is Bored

About This Book

"A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender."
— Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy...

Page Count
352
On Sale
07/28/2020

Book Details

"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

"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

A hilariously heartfelt novel influenced in part by the author’s time assisting Carrie Fisher.

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

She needs an assistant.
He needs a hero.

Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for a wild 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's an actress in need of assistance, and he's adrift and in need of a lifeline.

Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and award-winning movie star, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known in another role: Outrageous Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Chaotically so, as Charlie quickly discovers.

Charlie gets the job, and his 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 life's 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.

Imprint Publisher

Henry Holt and Co.

ISBN

9781250266491

In The News

"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

About the Creators

A Star Is Bored

A Star Is Bored

A Star Is Bored
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