I'm Jack - Softcover

Mark Blacklock

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178378086X ISBN 13: 9781783780860

Publisher: Granta Books, 2016

Synopsis

In this provocative novel Mark Blacklock portrays the true and complex history of John Humble, aka Wearside Jack, the Ripper Hoaxer, a timewaster and criminal, sympathetic and revolting, the man hidden by a wall of words, a fiction-spinner worthy of textual analysis. In this remarkable work, John Humble leads the reader into an allusive, elusive labyrinth of interpretations, simultaneously hoodwinking and revealing. I'm Jack is a riveting novel about truth, lies, prison and shame. It is also a profound and furious love letter to Sunderland. It is a puzzle, a hoax, a multi-voice portrait and a virtuoso assemblage of textual elements. I'm Jack announces the arrival of a radically talented and innovative novelist.

About this title

Review:

'Here are dark telegrams from an expertly realised otherness that is Sunderland. Spare. Swift. Smart. And dangerous. Carrying us through maps of shame to rescue a convincing fiction of the past from its sullen entropy' -- Iain Sinclair

'Absorbing and fascinating. Using multi-layered storytelling, a deep personal knowledge of Sunderland past, present and legend in a believable and hard-hitting blend of fact and imagination, it paints a genuinely disturbing vision of an obsessive, calculating and ultimately self-destructive personality' -- Bryan Talbot, author of Dotter of Her Father's Eyes

'A gripping study in self-invention - and, ultimately, self-erasure' -- Tom McCarthy

'An audacious exercise in mimicry... Blacklock has the voice down pat, with the same insidiously familiar tone as Humble's tape or his original letters. Its tone is mischievous, with a vein of dark, crafty humour - though the overall effect is sombre. Blacklock's Humble is impossible to like; yet by the end it is almost impossible not to feel sorry for him' -- Financial Times

'A deftly executed ventriloquist act, it's anchored in the true story of notorious hoaxer John Humble... The book itself is just as slippery' --Observer

'The ageing Humble is a figure lost on the margins of society: alcoholic, in and out of gaol and lacking any real relationship... [Suggesting] that crime might be understood by looking at the particular social situations that contribute to it, Blacklock presents Humble as far from 'evil' but a melancholic echo of a wider deprivation' -- Jerome de Groot, History Today

'An intelligent, disturbing slice of noir. He reconstructs Humble's writing style to develop the "relationship" between Wearside Jack and Oldfield... The Ripper story, to which Wearside Jack is a pathetic adjunct - has become a relentless examination of male identity and violence.' violence.' --Catherine Taylor, Guardian

About the Author:

MARK BLACKLOCK has a doctorate in 4th Dimensionality and lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 178378086X
• ISBN 13: 9781783780860
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272