Eureka Street - Hardcover

Wilson, Robert McLiam

4.17

4,195 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436202840 ISBN 13: 9780436202841

Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1996

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By the author of "Ripley Bogle", this is a story of love set against the backdrop of Belfast. The mysterious letters "OTG" start appearing all over the city. The IRA and UVF issue death threats, but when Jake discovers the meaning, he too starts daubing the letters on the city's walls.

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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

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