We're So Famous - Softcover

Jaime Clarke is a graduate of the University of Arizona and holds an MFA from Bennington College. He is the author of the novels We're So Famous, Vernon Downs, World Gone Water and Garden Lakes; the editor of the anthologies Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and Talk Show: On the Couch with Contemporary Writers; and co-editor of the anthologies No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road Magazine (with Mary Cotton) and Boston Noir 2: The Classics (with Dennis Lehane and Mary Cotton). He is a founding editor of the literary magazine Post Road, now published at Boston College, and co-owner, with his wife, of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.

Jaime Clarke pulls off a sympathetic act of sustained maleimagination: entering the minds of innocent teenage girls dreaming of fame. A glibly surreal world where the only thing wanted is notoriety and all you really desire leads to celebrity and where stardom is the only point of reference. What's new about this novel is how unconsciously casual the characters' drives are. This lust is as natural to them as being American-it's almost a birthright.  Imagine Britney Spears narrating The Day of the Locust as a gentle fable and you'll get the idea. -  Bret Easton Ellis

Daisy, Paque, and Stella want. They want to be actresses. They want to be in a band. They want to be models. They want to be famous, damn it. And so...they each tell their story of forming a girl group, moving to LA, and flirting with fame. Clarke doesn't hate his antiheroines-he just views them as by-products of the culture: glitter-eyed, vacant, and cruel. The satire works, sliding down as silvery and toxic as liquid mercury. -- Entertainment Weekly

Clarke seems to have created a crafty book of bubble letters to express his anger, sending off a disguised Barbie mail bomb that shows how insipid and money-drenched youth culture can be.  - Village Voice

Jaime Clarke's novel We're So Famous follows Stella, Paque, and Daisy-three utterly talentless girls from Phoenix who share a near-horrifying affinity for Bananarama. But it's only after Daisy and Paque's unwitting connection to a double murder helps skyrocket their band, Masterful Johnson, to nationwide stardom that the story really gets going. Through a string of pop-culture references (Neve Campbell, Dennis Hopper, Jennifer Grey's nose job) and mishaps (an unfortunate lip-synching tragedy a la Milli Vanilli, movie deals, smack), Clarke keeps the satire sharp and his heroines clueless. -Spin Magazine

This first novel is plastic fantastic. Daisy, Paque and Stella are talentless teens, obsessed by Bananarama and longing for stardom. They love celebrity and crave the flashbulbs and headlines for themselves. The girls become fantasy wrestlers, make a record, get parts in a going-nowhere film, then try to put on big brave smiles in the empty-hearted world of fame. Sad, sassy and salient. -- Elle Magazine