COLIN BATEMAN's fourth novel does for the written form what Pulp Fiction and Robert Altman did for the screen. Fast moving, fast paced, irreverent and often downright crude, Empire State takes a group of disparate people and crash-lands them together for an experience they are unlikely to forget. For the most part Bateman's book is set in a present-day New York, where very few of the main characters are having much luck with life.
Nathan Jones, plagued by the fact that he has been given a name from a Supremes hit song, leaves his home in Crossmaheart in Northern Ireland after witnessing the brutal murder of his workmates at the hands of the IRA. He is haunted by the voice of Sex Pistols singer Sid Vicious, who was playing on his Walkman as the carnage was taking place.
His girlfriend Lisa works in a sex club and is torn between her love of Nathan and her wish to escape his temper, drinking and mood swings.
After saving a man from two muggers in Central Park, Nathan is offered a job as a security guard in the Empire State building where employees are preparing for the visit of President Michael Keneally, Clinton's successor.
Just as things start going well for Nathan, girlfriend Lisa packs her bags and heads for Cape Cod, leaving Nathan to fend for himself something he isn't very good at. Attempts to contact her via the Oprah Winfrey show prove frustratingly fruitless and Nathan has alcohol-induced hallucinations in which he comes face-to-face with Sid Vicious and Yoko Ono.
Using a snapshot technique, Bateman takes us through the moving scene where Lisa leaves Nathan. She arrives at the bus station. He arrives home to find her gone. He runs across New York to bring her back. The bus pulls out. The scene climaxes exhaustedly in Nathan's realisation that she has finally gone.
Bateman's talent lies in being able, for instance, to describe a mundane hangover so tangibly and with such precision that the reader can feel the pain of it. His satire in the Northern Ireland episode is pure gold, as when President Keneally's aides are briefing him on the intricacies of Ulster:
"The areas marked in green signify a majority Catholic population, i.e. generally sympathetic to a united Ireland. The areas marked in orange represent a Protestant majority, i.e. generally sympathetic to maintaining strong links with Great Britain."
President Keneally nodded thoughtfully. "And the blue area in the centre, what does that represent?"
"That's Lough Neagh, Mr President."
Unfortunately, these comic moments are almost lost in wacky. over-the-top situations as the action moves between the Empire State and the trail of dead bodies left in the wake of white supremacist George Burley, who has a personal grudge against the President. Burley personifies evil in the novel, and some of his antics do not make comfortable bedtime reading.
In the case of Burley, and indeed with all the characters, the reader remains emotionally detached, and at times turned off completely, especially when the novel takes a turn in the direction of the ridiculous. Arriving on the 86th floor of the Empire State building observatory, the President is taken hostage. When asked why he took the President prisoner, Nathan answers: "For a bit of crack."
There ensues a serious conversation between the FBI and the President's man about how long a crack rush lasts. Bateman's novel is black at times, with moments of complete unseriousness; nonetheless, I will not mind how long Nathan Jones is gone.
