What do You think about Divorcing Jack (1996)?
Okay, quick synopsis. Dan Starkey is an Irish journalist who likes his drink. One day, he meets a student called Margaret and takes her back to his house when a party is in swing. There, he kisses her, gets thrown out of the house. Within 24 hours, Margaret is found murdered by Starkey with her last words being "Divorce...Jack." He goes on the run, trying to find who murdered Margaret and why? And most importantly, who is Jack and why is he divorced?This is a funny book. Seriously funny. Bateman writes Starkey as a tongue-in-cheek guy who you can't help liking. Every page contains a laugh or at worst, a guilty chuckle. I don't know what to really say about this book without spoiling it. All I say is give it a go and then afterwards, watch the brilliant film starring David Thewlis. It is hilraious!
—Helen
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2508355.htmlI picked this up at a Brussels literary event last year, at which Bateman himself spoke and autographed a couple of his works for me. I had previously read a couple of his thrillers set in Belfast, usually involving struggling journalists who get into political and criminal difficulties, though I don't think I had looked at any of them this century. Divorcing Jack is more political, but it is a slightly different politics to our time line, set in an alternate 1995 where the Alliance Party is about to win the elections and take power. (I read this bit with particular interest because in our timeline, the real Alliance Party's central Director of Elections in 1995 was, er, me; and we were struggling to hit the 6.5% we got in 1996, never mind win outright. A significant subplot revolves around the party's candidate for North Belfast, who in 1995-96, in our timeline, was, again, me; but Bateman's fictional McGarry had a much more successful political career than I did.) As with the other Bateman novels I've read, the narrator is a journalist down on his luck. Here, his marriage is on the rocks, two other women appear on the scene, and he unleashes a criminal scandal which threatens to rock the political world to its foundations. Bateman's Northern Ireland is a small world. There is only one taxi driver in the whole of Belfast, apparently. The least credible element of this alternate Northern Ireland is that everyone at the top level of politics has known each other practically from childhood, and that the battles of young love are still being fought a decade or two later, along with all the other political battles. I do actually know of a couple of countries where this is a decent explanation of a lot of the political dynamics; but Northern Ireland, given its internal division and also relative permeability to outside influences, is not one of them.But I'm far enough away in time and (usually) space to appreciate that not every detail of the fictional politics of Bateman's Northern Ireland needs to be convincing to make it an entertaining book; and it is an entertaining book - in particular, he catches the caustic Belfast wit very well, also showing how it can link to a cynical worldview where scepticism even of the apparently heroic is always justified. It's not a terribly attractive approach, but at least it means that, by assuming the worst in advance, you are more likely to get pleasant surprises than unpleasant surprises.It's also striking, to a visitor from the 21st century, how much the plot of this book set in 1995 depends on old technology - the McGuffin is a cassette tape of which there is only one copy; when your spouse goes missing you have to call round all imaginable relatives and friends and ask if they know where your loved one is, because nobody has a mobile phone. Anyway, it's of its time, but it brought me back to places which were very important to me once, and showed them to me from a different angle and in a different light. I don't know how well it would be received outside Northern Ireland - the humour is very local - and I'm not even sure how well it was received here - rather too close to the bone in some cases. But I liked it.
—Nicholas Whyte
I generally liked the book and no small part of that comes from recognizing the small bars and larger political landscape of Belfast from the mid 90s. The larger plot seems a bit ridiculous truth be told, but in Bateman's debut novel you see him finding his brilliant beta male voice infused alternately with sarcasm and feebleness that manifests itself so excellently in "Mystery Man." The scene with the nun is particularly hilarious. I plan on reading all of Bateman's works so it was good to go back to the beginning to see how his style/voice evolves over time. (I don't know how best to describe the greatness of parts of "Mystery Man" except through my example of shamelessly pushing the title on friends and strangers alike. Northern Irish-isms can make non-natives scratch their head at times but any author fluent in self-deprecating snark-tastic sarcasm is speaking my language) "The car door was unlocked. I pulled it open. A nun sat dwarfed behind the wheel, resplendent in brown and cream. I said 'In God's name, help me.' She gave me a look that was more Armalite than Carmelite and said 'Fuck off.'"
—Josh
