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‘Big Jessie’ was my deliberate attempt at writing a novel set in the supposedly ‘Troubles’ free Belfast some years after peace broke out. I think it’s a more confident book than ‘London Irish’; I was a more assured writer having had one book accepted. Just as well really, because I was trying to conjure a city that had won a new found confidence after so many years cowering under its own dark and emboldened headlines.
The book was loosely based on my experiences as a freelance music journalist working in Belfast and on my time at The Ulster Newsletter, the national morning paper in Northern Ireland. I have always been a fan of road movies, some of the great on screen relationships have been forged on the road, and so I decided to stick my main character – the music journalist Jessie Black – in a van with an all girl rock group as they tour Ireland. I have a few friends in Belfast who have toured their bands pretty successfully (supporting the likes of Pixies and Sneaker Pimps) and I was well aware of the comic potential of life on the road.
However, I had no intention of writing the Northern Irish ‘Spinal Tap’ - a ‘Tap’ being a football shirt in Ulster - and so I introduced a darker undercurrent to Jessie’s road trip as repeated attempts are made on his life. Ultimately, he’s forced to go it alone and try and unscramble the precarious situation he finds himself in; a situation that assumes national significance.
Despite the violence, I would hope that the book retains the optimism of the new improved Northern Ireland. It was this optimism that I had originally set out to capture. I have said often enough that Ulster people, more than any other, live by the adage that if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. With ‘Big Jessie’ I was constantly trying to offer up that smile in the face of adversity. Hopefully the reader’s smiles get bigger as Jay Black’s situation gets more … er … adverse.
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