The Alternative Hero

by THORNTON, TIM

• ISBN13: 9780307456137
• ISBN10: 0307456137
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-13
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

What do you do if you're a failed music fanzine writer in your early thirties with a dead-end job, and the best moment of your life occurred when you went to your first Thieving Magpies gig as a teenager and suddenly youbelongedin a way you never had before, and the worst moment of your life occurred about six years later when Lance Webster, the Magpies' lead singer, self-destructed on stage before your eyesbasically taking you with himand just today you've discovered that Lance lives down the street from you? If you're Clive Beresfordthe haplessly obsessed guy at the center of Tim Thornton's wildly comic and energetic debut novelyou get remarkably drunk and write and deliver a note to your idol (the contents of which you can't remember the next morning), which causes two very large bouncer types to appear at your door warning you to back off, which, in turn, causes you to hide your true identity when you do finally meet Lance, totally by accident (he's come a long way since the Magpies, but he is still LANCE F**CKING WEBSTER!) . . . none of which deters you from believingreally believingthat he could still save your life if only you could get that "earth-shattering exclusive" interview with him. With the story shifting between Clive's life-changing Magpies past and his frantic present, we get a headlong, boisterous coming-of-age (if-not-quite-growing-up) romp and a warmhearted, hilarious view of friendship, hero worship, and the full-blast power of music to help us become, at the very least, who we would like to think we are.

Author Biography

Tim Thornton plays the drums for the alt/blues artist Fink. The Alternative Hero is his first novel.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

But by the time eleven o’clock had struck, two things had magically happened: one, I had been transformed into a selfless hero of the hour, possessed of endless public spirit and generosity, sensitive, thoroughly modern, masculine and (perhaps) attractive; two, I had decided to rub along through the day after all. The power of women, eh?

All right, bearing in mind that our fourteen-hour relationship has just come to an abrupt and fairly acrimonious end, by which I must be slightly influenced, I can still say that she wasn’tthatattractive. I think it was more the initial shock of her bursting through the door (carrying her bike), actually being female and close to my age, then the fact that she spent the next five minutes telling me how wonderful I was for giving up a whole day and how much she’d heard about me from Jackie (eh?), all the time flashing her eyes and doing that tactile thing. I mean, I suppose it’s just nice to be flirted with, and
complimented and stuff, because to be frank (and I don’t mean the violins to come out here) it’s been a while. So when she finally put on her white tunic and disappeared inside the consulting room, I was gasping a bit. Okay, I’m being unfair. It’s also because she’s . . . you know. Pretty. An ingredient not lost on me when, some eight (nonetheless knackering) hours later, she (yes, she) suggested we go for a drink.

Now, before you start worrying that this is all getting perilously close to the Nick Hornby zone, there’s a good reason for telling you all this. Here we have, or had, a fairly standard thirty-year-old London-dwelling Englishwoman. Born in Kent, I think, normal school, studied to be a vet in London. Likes doing normal London things: drinking, partying, eating out, going to the cinema. Clearly— although we didn’t discuss it properly until much later—enjoys
music, as she mentioned she had tickets to this year’s Glastonbury. But halfway through the evening, which was going very nicely, thank you (a few pints in, chat flowing, the pub buzzing but not too crazy), the following exchange occurred.

“Well, at least you only have to talk to them on the phone,” she was despairing, on the subject of the general public. “I actually have to meet the fuckers. Tell ’em what’s wrong with their bloody pets.”

“You don’t enjoy it?”

“I love the animal part.”

“You love animals’ parts?”

“Silly,” she laughed. “I love the actual vet bit. It’s the bloody publicrelations bit I can’t bear.”

“Right.”

“You know what I wish?” she began, playing with an empty crisp packet. “I wish it could be a vet drive-through. They drop the animals off at a kiosk, bugger off and wait in the car park. Then they get called over the loudspeaker when I’ve finished, drive to a second kiosk where they get their pet back and a printout of what’s wrong with them.”

“That’s a great idea. I should think they’ve got those already in America.”

“Probably.”

“But you do get relatively interesting characters in your place,” I suggested, deciding the time was right.

“Like?”

“Well, the guy today, who picked up Jessica the cat. Just before you arrived.”

“Jessica? That old tabby with lymphoma?”

“Lymphoma,” I winced. “That’s like cancer, yeah?”

“It is cancer. Poor thing.” She drew her index finger sharply across her neck and shrugged.

“Curtains?”

“Weeks, I’m afraid. Maybe less. The guy’s heartbroken, though. He keeps taking her in for pointless treatment. Seems to not care too much about the cost.&#

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Excerpted from The Alternative Hero by Tim Thornton
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