The Alternative Hero

I read this great novel in two evenings - on top of transporting me back to my lost Britophile 90s indie youth, it's a masterclass of comic timing and inventive scribbling. Think George Saunders at a gig, or Woody Allen at Woodstock only 20 years later. Deserves to be read, laughed at, discussed, and possibly even filmed. And no, you don't need to like the music, but I guess it may help.

In the late 1980s, Clive Beresford loves the indie band Thieving Magpies. In fact the student worships the band's frontman Lance Webster. Clive is a groupie of sorts as he attends every concert the band performs. However, his hero destroys himself and vanishes from the pop culture scene. Now in his early thirties Clive remains heartbroken and betrayed since his superstar crumbled from the pedestal. Clive is unable to cope in relationships or at work. However, he soon learns his former hero lives nearby and so Clive revs up his courage to meet Lance using his newest job at a vet as the means, but also pretend he does not know this is his fallen angel because he plans to write an exposé. THE ALTERNATIVE HERO is a wonderful look at music over the past two decades; especially deep is the present era with the audience seeing inside a fallen remorseful hero who was unable to deal with his growing fame back when he was rising. Lance in some ways is like Jonathan Rhys Meyers' role of Louis Connolly in whimsical August Rush though in the movie he gets a second chance. The fun in the tale is Clive as a teen groupie worshiping his God and as an adult scheming to tell all about his fallen God. Although the story line contains too many rigged arrangements including the climax although in fairness that is what Clive is doing, fans will enjoy this dark comedic yet profound tale of the hero falling off the pedestal. Harriet Klausner