Star Quality: A Novel [Hardcover]

Joan Collins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2002

hen gutsy Irish redhead Millie McClancey defies her humble beginnings to pursue a life on the stage, she becomes the first of four generations of unforgettable women to taste success in the exciting yet precarious world of show business. Taking readers on a breathtaking journey from the music halls of World War I London to the glitz of Broadway and from Hollywood in its heyday right up to the present, Star Quality is a gripping tale of ambition, betrayal, sex, and survival. Joan Collins is a legendary woman with stardom in her genes, and with Star Quality she'll enchant readers nationwide with this engrossing and thrilling page-turner.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like mother, like daughter, like granddaughter-the notion of history repeating itself functions as both plot frame and theme in Collins's latest novel, a multigenerational saga that spans a century of family triumphs and tragedies set against the backdrop of the ever-changing entertainment industry. Millie McClancey is just a na‹ve Irish lass when, having been compromised by a roguish nobleman, she takes to England's music hall stages, wowing London and New York. In the 1940s, Millie's illegitimate and far more sophisticated daughter, Vickie, becomes a Hollywood sensation. And Vickie's wild child, Lulu, becomes a supermodel in the '80s before turning to the soaps. Through it all, most of their misfortunes may be attributed to Patsy, an enemy Millie made in her youth, and Patsy's grudge-carrying descendants. Like overteased hairstyles and television programs about oil barons, this benign offering has a pass‚ feel. Derivative of just about everything-Moll Flanders, The Godfather, Funny Girl, Valley of the Dolls-it even has Bugs Bunny gangsters ("Yeah, boss, yeah, good idea"). For readers who make it to the closing curtain of this sprawling camp extravaganza, the ultimate message-while years and fashions may be different, "nothing changes"-will come as no surprise.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Millie McClancey, a feisty, redheaded maid in an English manor house during World War I, knows that her future will be onstage after seeing her first revue in the gritty music halls of London. With the support of young master Toby, who encouraged her budding skills as a singer, Millie makes a name for herself in small London clubs, and soon becomes the quintessential flapper, the fantasy of every male, the idol of every female. But Toby is the only man she loves. When he promises to marry her, she sleeps with him and becomes pregnant--only to learn that he wants nothing to do with her. Millie's daughter, Vickie, becomes the second generation to make it big, lighting up the 1940s silver screen. Both women are seen as fast and loose, but their exploits usher in a new age of female independence, and the third generation--Vickie's daughter, Lulu, rising to fame during the drug-crazed 1980s--is no exception. Collins' depiction of the mood of each era is on point, and she embroiders the starlets' cliched stories with intriguing characters and revenge-seeking enemies. A delicious romp sure to charm fans of easy and even sleazy reading. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1st edition (November 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401300006
• ISBN-13: 978-1401300005
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,774,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars BUT, THERE IS THAT VOICE!, December 18, 2002

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Star Quality (Audio Cassette)

It's that voice, the soft dulcet tones that can frame a threat as easily as an endearment. It's the voice that drove Blake Carrington to distraction on TV's "Dynasty." No one could read the words of Joan Collins as truly as the actress herself, and so she does.

Granted, those words are a bit of fluff, but who doesn't need ear candy once in a while?

Gorgeous and red-headed, Millie McClancey is the product of famine ravaged Ireland. She's poor but star struck, and she makes it big on the stage. As a matter of fact, she's the first of four generations to do so. Following in their turn are her daughter, Vickie, and later her granddaughter, Lulu.

Each, of course, leads a tumultuous life fraught with love and danger. "Star Quality spans the generations from early 20th century London to Broadway today, while Collins spices the years with sex, secrets and success.

Predictable? Yes.

But, there is that voice.

- Gail Cooke

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It's nearly terrible...damned with faint praise, December 15, 2002

By 

Tana Butler (Soquel, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Star Quality: A Novel (Hardcover)

Well, I started reading it yesterday, along with my buddies at Readerville.com, and quickly realized I needed a notepad next to me while I turned the pages.

Notes:

p. 19: When were fishnet tights invented?

p. 20: Could Millie really escape to the theater on a daily basis because the rest of the staff was too busy to monitor her chores? Clearly Joan Collins has never had a job.

p. 30: Shall we guess who? "In the passage outside, someone else who had heard everything crept away shaking with rage." Well, who's the only character we're already supposed to dislike? Who sneered at the three-toed man?

p. 38: I actually think this sentence is excellent: "She didn't even feel the need to breathe. she just drew her breath from him now and again." Yow.

p. 55: A TINY STAB OF PAIN?!?!?!

The book is suffering from too many adverbs.

p. 72: Now it's getting incredible. A humanitarian bachelor with a dorm for performers? I loved this bit: "...a pretty ballerina would pirouette as a boy played the harmonica."

It's like a bad Thomas Kinkade painting, the one with the lighthouse situated, "unhelpfully," in a forest.

p. 75: I await one original phrase.

p. 76: She uses the word "chockablock."

p. 77-78: History lesson time. "So many husbands and fathers had been killed in the war, thousands of women, young and old, were left with no means of support." Breathtakingly unoriginal-just one in an endless parade of sentences crippled with clichés.

p. 81: "Millie, picking up a pair of large scissors , began to chop off her long red hair into a fashionable bob." Well, that I wanna see. Everyone I know who ever impulsively took a pair of scissors to their hair wound up in the Shame Ward at the hospital.

p. 83: "...determined to live her life to the full."

I'm always so happy when people do that, and when nice writers tell us they're doing that.

And my final observation, now that I've gotten to Chapter 9, is that it's so sweet that Joan Collins was alive for the whole thing. So at least we know it's historically accurate.

This book is so cliché-ridden, it feels like it's already been chewed for you. The only people who should buy this book are those so obsessed with celebrity that they have no other meaning in life. Or do what I did: take notes and laugh, laugh, laugh. Just as Joan Collins is...all the way to the bank!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars ZERO ORIGINALITY, January 5, 2003

By 

"little_woman" (Minooka, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Star Quality: A Novel (Hardcover)

She starts off by taking her sister's idea of writing about back scenes HOLLYWOOD, which Jackie wore out years ago. She writes of this Irish peasant girl from the perspective of British aristocracy and never rolls up her sleeves to bring to life the hard scrabble world of the character, so Molly is little better than a stick figure. You'll immediately recognize that these characters are the facsimile of the Barrymore Family. The plot is never developed and is told like some High Tea tome. Ms. Collins uses every cliche of the last century and her parallels reveal her keen lack of awareness of the human condition. She needs to learn as her sister did that British euphimisms don't play well in American literature unless they are made within quotation marks and used to season a particular character. It reads like some drama queen reading a script and in no way resembles a novel. The regal demeanor of the book is self serving posturing and is not designed to enlighten or entertain, but to impress---which it didn't.