Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1373280 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Seamless bass bottles, tramping the world.
Begins with wonderful account of childhood coping with the trauma of being half Welsh and half Irish (I'm the other way round if you see what I mean).

Graphic black humour of the Irish Troubles delivered in seamless and sometimes beautiful prose. Has the flavour of fear and the excited dreams of youth - as Mr Bogle sets off to conquer the world and ends up with the down and outs, while never quite escaping the streets of Belfast. Read it.

should be up there with the modern classics
This book is simply fantastic. I find it difficult to believe that it unknown to most book lovers. It is a modern clasic on a par with 'God of Small Things' or 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'.
Wilson is a gifted writer reminding me a lot of Nabokov. Like him the language he uses is almost lyrical, it flows like a poem at times, and he uses very big words in exactly the right context and without destroying the flow of writing.
If you like George Orwell too this book will appeal to you being reminiscent of 'Down and Out in Paris and London'.
It is about Bogle, a high-brow vagrant living in London, and his life as a down-and-out. It is oft-times funny and quite tragic in places. It is a must read for literature lovers.

An unusual and good read
This book is even better than Eureka Street. It has a twist to it and I won't give it away... It's very refreshing to read an Irish book that doesn't include the usual paddys, potatoes and irish girls with rolling r's. Read it and, as me fall in love with ripley Bogle...