Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other - Softcover

Wilson, Robert McLiam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345427130 ISBN 13: 9780345427137

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1999

Synopsis

In a city blasted by years of force and fury, but momentarily stilled by a cease-fire, two unlikely friends search for that most human of needs: love. But of course, a night of lust will do. Jake Jackson and Chuckie Lurgan--one Catholic, one Protestant--navigate their sectarian city and their nonsectarian friendship with wit and style. Chuckie, an unemployed dreamer, stumbles into bliss with a beautiful American who lives in Belfast. Jake, a repo man with the soul of a poet, can only manage a hilarious war of insults with a spitfire Republican whose Irish name, properly pronounced, sounds like someone choking.

Brilliant, exuberant, and bitingly funny, Eureka Street introduces us to one of the finest young writers to emerge from Ireland in years.

About this title

Review

Robert McLiam Wilson was born in Belfast in 1964 and that is all the biographical information the flyleaf offers. But what it really means to be a Belfast boy, both in the sixties and now, is vividly captured within its pages.

Eureka Street is set in the troubled city during the fragile cease-fires of the late 1990s. It's the story of Chuckie Lurgan, a poor, fat, Protestant boy whose life lurches from monotony into a fairy tale after his 30th birthday. Love suddenly comes in the shape of Max, an American girl whose diplomat father was killed within minutes of setting foot on Belfast soil; and money comes in the guise of a Government business loan. Good fortune almost comes via the scams of ready-to-wear Balaklava shops and leprechaun walking sticks, a running joke taken seriously by the rest of the world. Chuckie is Belfast--a mismatched dream; a battle to make something from nothing; a charmer with feet of clay.

Jake Jackson is his opposite--hard, Catholic and looking for the love that Chuckie seems to attract without trying. A realist among the bombs and roadblocks, Jake still has a poet's voice, passionate about his city- -"the air is full of regret and desire. You should stand some night on Cable Street, letting the little wind pluck your flesh ... the city will stick to your fingers like Sellotape."

This is a blissful bruiser of a book, with humour and affection drawing the painfully acute portraits together. "Chuckie's mother was a big woman, built historical, like a ship or a city ... since he had been 14 years old, he had lived in quiet dread of his mother making her mark." Addictive, triumphant, sharp, sad and witty--it's no wonder that the BBC snapped this up for a series. --Elizabeth McGregor

Review

Eureka Street is funny and brutal and a lot more . . . a violent, angry, busy, living book.” Irish Times (Dublin)

He is one of the finest talents to emerge in Irish fiction for years.” Colum McCann

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0345427130
• ISBN 13: 9780345427137
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400