“Jack”
A new book launched on 25th April by Exeter’s own taxi driver Jack the Hat about the untamed lives of Exeter students and locals alike.
“It was always strange how sometimes it felt easier to reveal very personal events in our lives to complete strangers, as if the shame or the hurt would somehow melt away…”
Shane O’Sullivan was born in Nottingham in 1953. He attended Benedictine Monastery School, which he escaped at the age of 16. He has been on the run ever since. As a jack-of-all-trades, his litany of previous occupations includes: a hotel porter, a chef, a bar manager at Hemingway’s one-time watering hole in France, a London-based hamper delivery driver, a racehorse exercise rider, a young adult offenders care worker, a Pyrenees railway tunnel labourer, an exhibition organiser in Hong Kong, and even a property investment broker. He has travelled, lived, dreamed and written. With his love for social interaction and his old fashioned qualms, he has become one of Exeter’s most beloved taxi drivers. He published a poetry collection, Quickening of the Sand, in 2016. His first published non-fiction novel is Jack.
Taxi driver “Jack the Hat” creates a world that captivates his readers. He takes us along with him through all his conscious reflections, his witty slights, his illusions as well as his own reality. Based on true stories, author Shane O’Sullivan introduces a domain depicted through a little University city that he defines as “the Exeter bubble”. This book explores an endless array of juxtapositions. We meet a woman facing prison release shortly before we are greeted with the politics of student intramural football. We, as readers, lie on the fence of disrespect and civility. Jack the Hat’s taxi takes on all different realms of spaces, from a counselling office to a football team meeting, to a café catch up, to a helpline to a priest’s confession box. It will make you chuckle, cry and contemplate. Leaving no stone unturned, Jack mentally logs a collection of addresses and times as he ventures across Exeter, Devon, and South West England to surrender his self-effacing spirit to the requests and wishes of everyone. Jack the Hat is aptly able to jump on the band wagon of student gossip and reveal the complex lives of colourful local characters and University students through the lens of his taxi. Classics Professor Mathew Wright describes it as “engaging, funny, humane, warm-hearted, and full of human interest.”
Contact details:
Website: abookcalledjack.co.uk / shanemooreosullivan.co.uk
Email: Shane-osullivan@outlook.com
Facebook: JACK (https://www.facebook.com/JACK-218110519023639/)
Release date: 25thApril
Pop-up stall: 24thMay, the Ram, University of Exeter
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