Alma Cogan is the title of a 1991

1991 in literature

The year 1991 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Douglas Coupland publishes the novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularizing the term Generation X as the name of the generation....

 novel by Gordon Burn

Gordon Burn

Gordon Burn was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction....

, reprinted in 2004

2004 in literature

The year 2004 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Canada Reads selects Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing to be read across the nation....

. It was Burn's first novel and won the Whitbread Book Award in 1991. In the UK it was published in 1991 with the title Alma Cogan. In the US, it was initially published as Alma.

In real life, Alma Cogan

Alma Cogan

Alma Cogan was an English singer of traditional pop music in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dubbed "The Girl With the Laugh/Giggle/Chuckle In Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era...

 was a well-known British pop singer of the 1950s and early 1960s, known as "The Girl with the Laugh in Her Voice." (Americans might think of her as something along the lines of Connie Francis

Connie Francis

Connie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw...

 or Lesley Gore

Lesley Gore

Lesley Gore is an American singer. She is perhaps best known for her 1963 pop hit "It's My Party", which she recorded at the age of 16. Following the hit, she became one of the most recognized teen pop singers of the 1960s.- Biography :Gore was born in New York City, New York. She was raised in...

.) A friend of the Beatles and many other pop acts of the era, Cogan died of cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

in 1966 at the age of 34.

Plot summary

In Burn's novel, however, Alma Cogan does not die in 1966, but retires from show business sometime thereafter to a quiet solitude near the English seashore, living neither in luxury nor poverty. In contrast to Cogan's bubbly public persona, Burn's Alma, who narrates the book, is an arch, dry-witted, highly intelligent observer of the world around her, mildly dismissive of, even jaded by, her showbiz past (but not entirely disdainful of it). She recounts with equal detachment the heady days of celebrity and the sordid backstage cruelties—including bouts of unexpected violence—as she muses on the nature of stardom and its many pitfalls, which entrap the worshipper as much as the worshipped. But her residual fame proves a gruesome and unwanted relic as it serves to tie her, through her fans, to an unforeseen encounter with evil.

Based on 'true' events

With the exception of Cogan's non-death in 1966, Alma Cogan is based largely on true events and real people.