Product Description

Belfast, in the six months just before and after the ceasefire. Chuckie Lurgan - fat, Protestant and poor, suddenly becomes wealthy by various means; Jake Jackson - reformed tough guy - is looking for love; and the strange letters "OTG" appear all over the city to the ignorance of all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106719 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 395 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Customer Reviews

As real as it gets!
Hailing from NI myself I am regularly disappointed by books claiming to be true to Northern Irish life. I was bought this book as a gift and read it expecting the same. Boy was I wrong. It is one of the raw-est (is there such a word?) funniest, darkest books I have read about NI - it sums up the attitudes and personalities in a way which is neither patronising nor stereo-typcial. If you want a real belly-laugh, read this book. If you want to know a little bit more about the attitudes and cultural mores that have allowed NI people to exist alongside years of terrorism and violence, read this book.

In short this book will not disappoint you. Enjoy!

This book moved me like nothing I have read
I have tried three times to think of words that would fit how wonderful, inspiring, moving, breath-taking, soul-shaking and plain funny I find this novel. I just cannot. This book has a soul. It shows you Belfast as I have known it my whole life, like a bitter-sweet song that is so sad but yet so beautiful it makes you love it even more. This book has everything and everyone I have know and felt about Belfast and it's people. This book has twists, it has black humour; wonderful, beautiful and hilarous turns of phrases; it has love and it has tragedy that tastes of the deepest sorrow.

If you want to know Belfast and what people there are really like, if you want to laugh (out load) read it, if you want a love story read it. You should just read it. This book is so good it should be on the National Curriculm.

Left me shell-shocked but satisfied.
I've just re-read this book after a couple of years. SInce I first read I've moved away from Belfast and N. Ireland, and the spot-on portrayal of the city and the loving detil has left me rather homesick.

The author gives you characters you care about, characters you want the best for and want to spend your time with. And he gives you some insight into the life of the ordinary Belfast, the Belfast that looks on in desensitized disbelief at what has happened there.

The three chapters centred on the city centre bomb blast left me with my jaw hanging open, shocked and near to tears. This man makes a point that isn't political, and certainly isn't revolutionary. He speaks up for the pain and hurt and pointlessness with a sarcasm that draws blood and a matter of fact sensitivity which leaves you reeling.

Lyrical.
Powerful.
Superb.