RaveThe Guardian (UK)The prose is searingly quick, revelatory and funny: Zink’s dialogue reads like our best plays. Entertaining banter could be this book’s largest trophy, were it not for the contents of the banter, which are so ambitious and ethically interested that they make it clear that Zink is one of our most important contemporary writers ... The ever-shifting flow of social and sexual power between the characters is nerve-racking and tantalising: there are no saints and no demons ... Zink is one of our most ambitious and explicitly political writers ... While this is a novel of ideas, the narrative is never cold or cerebral. It’s beautifully felt, and emotionally open-handed. I wanted love and joy for each of the 13 main characters, which the book (surprisingly!) delivers.
Yukio Mishima, Trans. by Sam Bett
RaveFull StopStar is rendered in exacting contemporary prose. The sentences are generally short and declarative, and the word choice is refreshingly mundane. This linguistic spareness allows the heated subject matter of Star to emanate through the cracks of the sentences ... This complex, psychological portrait of celebrity is a propulsive, enduring narrative that eerily predicts our contemporary digital tensions of the self ... In this way, though written nearly sixty years ago, far before the advent of social media celebrity culture, Star speaks to our modern contradictions of the inner and outer self masterfully. It also accomplishes a fascinating and singular interrogation of power, and how, whether by wealth or physical attractiveness or fame, people are able to build a delusional world for themselves in which they believe they share nothing, including death, with the rest of humanity.
