Eureka Street - Softcover

Wilson, Robert McLiam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749396725 ISBN 13: 9780749396725

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

Eureka Street is a story of Belfast in the 1990s, six months before and after another ceasefire. It is the story of Chuckie Lurgan, fat, Protestant and poor, who suddenly becomes wealthy by various legal but immoral means; and of Jake Jackson, Catholic reformed tough guy, who has been abandoned by his English girlfriend and is looking for love. Meanwhile the strange letters 'OTG' start appearing on walls and paving stones throughout the city.

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:

"Stylish, funny, black and memorable" (Irish Times)

"Shocking and reassuring, visceral and alive with the majesty and mystery of the city, Eureka Street cements Wilson's reputation as one of the best writers around" (Time Out)

"A novel of ambitious scope and compelling power; it marks a new level of accomplishment in an already formidable writer" (Times Literary Supplement)

"What is most striking is McLiam Wilson's range: tragedy, comedy, realism, absurdism and refreshing political insight. I am staggered by McLiam Wilson's scope" (The Times)

"A sane, moving and often very funny satire directed against the establishment of terror. In the face of arbitrary, violent death and genocidal conflict, Wilson celebrates humanity...he offers us no solutions, but shows us our best and our worst with a redemptive tenderness and common sense" (Scotsman)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0749396725
• ISBN 13: 9780749396725
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400