Alan Partridge: Big Beacon
£7.60£23.80 (-68%)
“Not only has Alan Partridge created an entirely new storytelling structure, it’s very funny indeed.” Jon Ronson
‘Partridge… has become the man our time deserves. Aha!’ The Times
In Big Beacon, Norwich’s favourite son and best broadcaster, Alan Partridge, triumphs against the odds. TWICE.
Using an innovative ‘dual narrative’ structure you sometimes see in films, Big Beacon tells the story of how Partridge heroically rebuilt his TV career, rising like a phoenix from the desolate wasteland of local radio to climb to the summit of Mount Primetime and regain the nationwide prominence his talent merits.
But then something quite unexpected and moving, because Big Beacon also tells the story of a selfless man, driven to restore an old lighthouse to its former glory, motivated by nothing more than respect for a quietly heroic old building that many take for granted, which some people think is a metaphor for Alan himself even though it’s not really for them to say.*
Leaving his old life behind and relocating to a small coastal village in Kent, Alan battles through adversity, wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious community, and ultimately shows himself to be a quite wonderful man.
* The two strands will run in tandem, their narrative arcs mirroring each other to make the parallels between the two stories abundantly clear to the less able reader.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Seven Dials (12 Oct. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 304 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1398719218 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1398719217 |
| Dimensions | 24.2 x 3.2 x 16.3 cm |
by Jason
Back to his best it was good to see him move away from his comfort zone (Norfolk) and head south finished the book in two days had me laughing throughout great book highly recommend even better on audible
by Paul Sadler
Wry humour and surprisingly touching narratives.
I don’t remember rating any other book with 5 *
His ability to intertwine fact and fiction is amazing.
by Mitchell D Poole
Very funny
by Amazon Customer
It’s good but certainly not Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab. Which actually improves with every read!
by PAAMC.
Just put nice plums.
by Dianne
Just lovely stuff
by peter williams
An entertaining read written in an unusual style. One of the better releases this autumn.
by O-mindcrime
As this is a Partridge book, it’s wonderfully silly…
In the first of the two plot lines in the book Alan decides to do up a lighthouse (out of spite, of course) and in the second plot line he makes a ‘triumphant’, but inevitably short lived, return to the BBC on the toe curling chat show ‘This Time’.
As you’d expect, the humour naturally springs from how Alan’s cartoon-like and self-deluded approach to life crashes up against the reactions of real people, be they builders working on the lighthouse, Devonshire folk objecting to the work being done on the lighthouse or the normal crop of Z list celebrities that exist on the periphery of Alan’s limited media world. As a result, there are a few genuine laugh out loud moment as this voyage of non-self discovery unfolds in the book.
Suffice to say, you probably have to be a Partridge fan to get the most laughs out of reading this, and bits of it are so preposterous that the plot strays away from what could ever be translated into a series on TV (e.g. the altercations with the sea bird are just pure slap stick). Still, as a life long ‘fan’, I enjoyed it overall.