The Starlings

Author(s): Vivienne Kelly

Fiction - General

It's March 1985 and Nicky Starling is turning eight, but it's a sad day. Nicky's grandmother Didie has just died. Almost worse - his father's beloved football team has lost the first match of the season. Nicky will miss Didie but he still has Rose, Didie's nurse. He wishes he could love footy, but what he really loves are the tales of King Arthur and stories from Shakespeare that his mother reads to him and that he acts out in his bedroom. But these stories don't have happy endings, an alarming fact for a boy whose family life is starting to fracture. Funny, tender and savage, The Starlingsis a wonderfully entertaining novel about secrets and defeat, about heroism and love, about what it might mean to lose everything.

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* A profile piece on Vivienne Kelly in a major broadsheet i.e. Age or Herald Sun. * Both The Starlings and Cooee to be recommended as Mother's Day titles in women's magazines. * Review coverage in major broadsheets. * Review coverage in University of Melbourne publications. * Pitch for Read with Raf book club title on ABC 774, and interviews on local radio in Melbourne. * Launch in Melbourne. * Text is so convinced of the appeal of this novel that it's offering readers a money-back guarantee: see back page for details. * Shared advertising in the Big Issue, Readings Monthly. * Giveaways and promotions with online booklover communities like Goodreads, Good Reading and Better Reading. * Significant online marketing campaign including chapter sampler and a focus on the money-back guarantee, via Facebook and Google Adwords. * Animated book trailer available on publication, to be shared on social media and sites like Better Reading. * Budget for bookseller catalogues. * Feature title in Text newsletters, website and social media campaigns. * Dedicated bookseller and influential reader mailout.

'Football, the plays of Shakespeare and Arthurian legends are all interwoven in this story. The author draws links between Nicky's disintegrating family life, the antics on the footy field and the tales of yore...I liked reading about the exploits of the players, who these days appear on our screens as commentators. It was also very touching to see Frank, who seemed to care only for his beloved Hawks, step up and support the emotional needs of his children when things started to go wrong.' Readings 'Nourished by a diet of Shakespeare, Arthurian legend, football fanaticism and his own family's dramas, the first original play that ultimately emerges from Nicky Starling's eight-year-old brain is an utterly delightful, laugh-out-loud creation. Fans of Kelly's Cooee will not be disappointed: The Starlings is another brilliant offering from this talented Australian author.' BookMooch 'Vivienne Kelly's first novel Cooee was a corruscatingly clever black comedy on hubris and the hidden costs of getting your heart's desire. Her second is a gentler but no less insightful interrogation of the things with which we console ourselves, creating meaning in humdrum lives.' SA Weekend

Vivienne Kelly was born and educated in Melbourne, where she now lives. She has worked at the University of Melbourne and at Monash University, and was awarded a doctorate for her work on myth and history in Australia. Cooee, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Awards.

General Fields

  • : 9781925498059
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : 0.481
  • : March 2017
  • : 23.40 cmmm X 15.30 cmmm
  • : Australia
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 368
  • : very good
  • : very good
  • : English
  • : 317
  • : Paperback
  • : Vivienne Kelly