Synopses & Reviews
Kristin Folger feels like she's on another planet. Her body keeps changing shape. Her mother wants her to dress like a girl. Her best friend's dating a weirdo. Her grandmother seems to be getting younger. And there's a ghost in the family's attic whom no one wants to talk about.
In the era of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and David Bowie, fourteen-year-old Kristin navigates the external and internal changes that come at top speed. Set in California in the early 1970s, The Life History of a Star is Kristin's sometimes comical, sometimes cynical, always thoughtful diary about what her life has been like since the ghost arrived. It takes a lot of time and an unforgettable family therapy session for Kristin to begin to learn who the ghost was -- and who he still is. And where on earth she fits in.
Caught up in the politics of her time and in the middle of a family who doesn't always understand her, Kristin makes a memorable journey through the byways of adolescence -- all the way to the stars and back again.
Review
Annette Curtis Klause
author of Blood and Chocolate and The Silver Kiss
I really enjoyed The Life History of a Star. I gobbled it down! I recognize myself in Kristin Folger and I recognize all these kids; I knew them in high school. This is a compelling fragile mix of funny and hurt -- a powerful portrayal of loss, and of a family in grieving, from the point of view of a sharp-witted teenaged girl, which creates a humorous, yet touching, and altogether real narrative. Tension and mystery are maintained in the midst of the description of everyday life, and the audience can laugh yet also read between the lines and sense the scary depths under the surface. I'll look forward to reading more by Kelly Easton.
Review
Cynthia D. Grant
winner of the PEN/Norma Klein Award and author of Mary Wolf and The White Horse
Fresh, funny, and touching, Kelly Easton's The Life History of a Star is as appealing as its heroine.
Synopsis
Kristin Folger feels like she's on another planet. Her body keeps changing shape. Her mother wants her to dress like a girl. Her best friend's dating a weirdo. Her grandmother seems to be getting younger. And there's a ghost in the family's attic whom no one wants to talk about.
In the era of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and David Bowie, fourteen-year-old Kristin navigates the external and internal changes that come at top speed. Set in California in the early 1970s, The Life History of a Star is Kristin's sometimes comical, sometimes cynical, always thoughtful diary about what her life has been like since the ghost arrived. It takes a lot of time and an unforgettable family therapy session for Kristin to begin to learn who the ghost was -- and who he still is. And where on earth she fits in.
Caught up in the politics of her time and in the middle of a family who doesn't always understand her, Kristin makes a memorable journey through the byways of adolescence -- all the way to the stars and back again.
Synopsis
In 1973, 14-year-old Kristin uses her diary to record her thoughts about the physical changes brought on by adolescence, and the emotional strain her brother, wounded in the Vietnam War, puts on the family.
About the Author
Kelly Easton has a B.A. in theater from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of California, San Diego. She has published stories in such literary journals as
The Connecticut Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Iris, and
Frontiers and won first prize in the North Carolina Writers' Network 1997 Fiction Competition. For the past six years, she was a lecturer and internship coordinator in the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she taught playwriting, creative writing, literature, and composition, and she is now writing full-time. Kelly Easton lives with her oceanographer husband and their two young children in Rhode Island.
The Life History of a Star is Kelly Easton's first book.