Lovers And Losers - Paul Burston

Burston’s preoccupation in his novels with glamour, camp and gender-bending all find their natural home in his latest novel, an entertaining romp through the New Romantic movement of the 1980s, with some mild satire – or perhaps it’s a fond appreciation for – the post-celebrity platform of modern reality TV shows and tabloid headlines.

The story charts the progress of ‘A Boy And His Diva’, a fictional composite of The Human League, Culture Club, Soft Cell and numerous other sexually ambiguous acts from the heyday of the early 1980s. Put together by a young gay man, Tony with a rebellious young friend he once met as a punk teenager, Katrina, the duo ride the crest of the New Romantic wave, competing in the charts with the likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, while bitching in the press with Boy George and Pete Burns, only to share in their inevitable descent of the glamorous lifestyle of drugs and “artistic differences”. Many years later Tony’s manager tries to revive his career by contracting him into a reality TV show set in a prison – ‘The Clink’, but the former pop-star will also need to make amends with Katrina, if she can be found.

Despite some attempts to reflect on other aspects of the period with a subplot about a young man who has died from AIDS, Burston skims through the rise and fall of the New Romantics with shallow superficiality, with neither Tony or Katrina, nor their career as pop stars being depicted as anything more than a bunch of rock industry clichés. That said, Lovers and Losers is a fun read for those who remember the music and the outrageous fashion of the period with some amount of embarrassment and fondness.

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