
Puckoon (Paperback)
Spike Milligan (author)Published: 25/01/1973

Only the gloriously unorthodox comic brain of Spike Milligan could come up with a novel as ludicrous and yet worryingly plausible as Puckoon. The short, surreal narrative involves a 1920s Irish border town being split down the middle between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and the large cast of idiosyncratic characters who are made to dance to their author’s giddily singular tune.
Puckoon is Spike Milligan's classic slapstick novel, reissued for the first time since it was published in 1963.
In 1924 the Boundary Commission is tasked with creating the new official division between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Through incompetence, dereliction of duty and sheer perversity, the border ends up running through the middle of the small town of Puckoon.
Houses are divided from outhouses, husbands separated from wives, bars are cut off from their patrons, churches sundered from graveyards. And in the middle of it all is poor Dan Milligan, our feckless protagonist, who is taunted and manipulated by everyone (including the sadistic author) to try and make some sense of this mess ...
Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780140023749
Number of pages: 160
Weight: 117 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 9 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Bursts at the seams with superb comic characters involved in unbelievably likely troubles on the Irish border' - The Observer
'Pops with the erratic brilliance of a careless match in a box of fireworks' - The Daily Mail
'Our first comic philosopher' - Eddie Izzard
'Milligan is the Great God to all of us' - John Cleese
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“classic!”
This is a laugh out loud read. Classic Milligan with all the comedy he will always be remembered for. A must buy book for anyone who is a goon show fan
“Put reading this on your bucket list”
Without any doubt on my part, I can say this is the funniest book I've ever read in the 60+ years I've been able to read! Whilst very occasionally lapsing into what can only be described as... More
“Brilliant”
A really brilliant book
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