I'm Jack

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Reviews

A gripping study in self-invention - and, ultimately, self-erasure - Tom McCarthy
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
The varied range and wit of his polyphonic chorus are reminiscent of Joe Orton's darkly subversive correspondence pranks... [An] intelligent [and] disturbing slice of noir - Catherine Taylor, Guardian
An audacious exercise in mimicry... 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 - Austin Collings, Financial Times
Less a novel and more an assault on the senses, I'm Jack cleverly uses inter-textual trickery and deft Mackem parlance to create a portrait of a man obsessed. It is a forensic montage, a frenzied confessional and a stark commentary on the effects of public notoriety. Moving, haunted and necessary - Benjamin Myers, author, Pig Iron
Compelling, troubling, fascinating, a delight to read. It is a sublime anti-novel and a brilliantly original intervention into a most peculiar episode of recent history - James Miller, author, Lost Boys
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, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
A deftly executed ventriloquist act, it's anchored in the true story of notorious hoaxer John Humble... The book itself is just as slippery - Hephzibah Anderson, Observer
[An] intriguing debut... There is an air of grubby menace throughout - Ben Myers, New Statesman
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

Author Bio

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