Rating: 
Summary: Funny and brutal
Review: A very good story about contemporary Ireland and Belfast. There are all the ingredients to make it a various and pleasant book: love, politics, feelings, adventures and very peculiar characters. The plot mainly follows the events happening to two friends. The first Chuckie is a protestant boy from the proletarian area of the city who turning thirty decides that it is time to earn some money. The second Jake is a Catholic boy about the same age of Chuckie, a very critic and direct character. His frankness probably is at the base of his difficulties in finding girls to date. Through the eyes of these two friends the reader is brought in a city pulsating with life but also with violence, terror and death. Many characters appear in different part of the novel and their lives, their hopes, their feelings, their past and present are so well described that they come to life in the reader's mind. I can see a conceptual division of the plot in two parts. The first one ending with the beautiful description of Belfast by night contained in chapter 10 and the other starting with the terrible description of the seen of an explosion contained in the next chapter. The first part of the book is lighter while in the second part death, although not directly touching the main characters, hovers on the plot. The consequences of the political hate are shown in all their brutality and horror. The armed factions are described as mere rascals who paradoxically kill Irish people in order to free Ireland. Throughout the story emerges a desire of peace, coming from the great majority of the people, well symbolised by the strong friendship between the Catholic Jake and the protestant Chuckie.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT BOOK
Review: GREAT BOOK with excellent character development. The mix of different points of view JACK's first person narration and CHUCKIE's Third Person viewing of him, is distictive and adds to the story.
Rating: 
Summary: The Troubles from an unromaticized point of view...
Review: Jake and Chucky, one Catholic and one Protestant, are best friends. They've both been effected by Belfast's violence but each avoids taking sides, Jake by actively hating both sides and their sectarian BS, and Chucky by enveloping himself in bizarre get-rich-quick capers. Much of Wilson's writing is wonderful: his description of Belfast's gritty beauty; the horror of a store bombing and its aftermath. But I must object to his unoriginal female characters, esp. Chuckie's American girlfriend, Max. Women who mask adolescent trauma with drug use and shallow sex just are not interesting anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and self-conscious
Review: McLiam Wilson's work seems fresh and real (what else would you expect from a man whose two last names mean 'son of William' in English and Gaelic?). He's not above one-liners, but they work here. When compared to a book with a similar mix of Troubles/daily life in N. Ireland, Divorcing Jack, I found Eureka Street fresher and simpler. Unlike Divorcing Jack, McLiam avoids the film noir treatment that Northern Ireland gets (a feel that is only occasionally appealing). Eureka Street is aware of Northern Ireland as a foreign country, as if McLiam is looking at it through the eyes of a stranger (which he might be as he is, if I am not mistaken, a resident of Paris now). The book pokes fun of some aspects of the conflict and humorously criticizes other aspects (three-letter paramilitary graffiti, Sinn Fein, Gaelic names, self-righteous activists). McLiam's narrator is Catholic and his protagonist is Protestant, but the book strives for non-partisanship, mocking both Unionists and Republicans with equal irreverence. A fantastic read.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I have ever read!
Review: Mostly enjoyable love story(s) set amid a group of friends in contemporary Belfast. The novel alternates between a third-person account of Chuckie (a Protestant who is somewhat reminiscent of George from Seinfeld) and the first person musings of Jake (Catholic). This dual narrative technique is a highly successful one. In novels with two protagonists writers often fall into the trap of writing both from the first-person, which usually ends up sounding forced in one, if not both, cases. Here, the two approaches offer a nice contrast, and complement each other perfectly. With satirical wit which mocks among other things activists and paramilitary groups, Wilson shows with great skill how the Troubles are constantly present, yet never directly affect most people. The book also does a nice job of depicting the mindless hatred between various factions, and the horrors which they inflict on each other and the innocents they supposedly represent. Against this backdrop, Chuckie, Jake and other characters search for love, each finding it to varying degrees of success. There are some fine bits of humor, especially a scam Chuckie runs, which is a priceless classic.
Rating:
Summary: Chance wonder
Review: Never having even heard of McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street found its way to my hands. Although somewhat sceptical to begin with, I soon started to terrorise my wife with my finding: All of a sudden I found a book that 1) I cannot put down, 2) gives a hint of Belfast behind the screens, 3) makes me laugh loudly ("giant dildo refund" etc), 4) includes the fancapitalitastic personality of Chuckie Lurgan. This is arguably my favourite book for several years. Last but not least - OTG!!!
Rating:
Summary: A true black satire.
Review: Robert Mclaim Wilson must of wrote this novel with the notion to portray the people of Belfest as absurd. Though this may seem as a rude thing to say, it is in fact a compliment to the ideas of this novel. That is to say,modern Belfest is plagued with people with politcal and social ideas that truely make no logical sense. This can be seen as the essense of the main characters Jake Jackson and Chucky Lurgan. They are, for the most part, educated indiviual who are trapped inside a world that they feel they have no control of. That is until Chuckie comes up with a brillant plan that makes all their dreams comes true. This story can be best be sumed up in the authors own words: "All stories are love stories" - And this novel truely is a tale of this notion.
Rating:
Summary: Would have been five stars if not for the big words.........
Review: Robert McLiam Wilson attended Cambridge so I should cut the obvious intellectual some slack; however, I can't get past his usage of enormous words every few pages in this book. The book, overall, is hilarious, well-crafted, witty, and extremely entertaining. It is introspective and thought-arousing. The theme is based on a peculiar friendship set in extremely peculiar times in northen Ireland. The two men in the friendship - one a Catholic, one a Protestant - find themselves looking out at the nightmarish battle plagued streets where they desperately try to find meaning and purpose in their everyday lives. I loved the plot and you will too, but be warned, you will find such words as(get ready): elocutionary, incongruous, aggregate, bourgeois, desultory, wintry, lissom, quandry, protozoic, copiously, opprobrium, ecumencial, lexical, coquetry, litany, cuckolded, cerebrospinal, pallid, suffused, goaded, pugilistic, volubly, galvanized, reticent, ominously, osculate, and many, many more. Also take note: all of these words can be found in the first one-hundred pages of the book! Now, before you Cambridge grads barbeque me too bad, please understand that most of us - your everyday bums from your everyday places - don't use words like litany, mannish, proletarian, incongruous, or ecumenicalism in our everyday vocabulary. Most people I know - and there are many - would be hard-pressed to use a word like "mundane, nonchalance, or imperative." Something tells me that Mr. Wilson doesn't use all these words either - although he just might. A very good read, with our without the huge words. Enjoy!
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Summary: Seattle Times, book page, Dec. 14, 1997
Review: The working class neighborhoods of Belfast are central to Robert McLiam Wilson's new novel, Eureka Street. That's the name of the street where Chuckie, the Protestant protagonist, lives with his mother. The narrator is Chuckie's cynical Catholic friend Jake, who lives in Poetry Street, a name that hints at the book's ambition. The story that unfolds as these two friends criss cross the city is both a funny enjoyable read and a serious political satire on the poisonous politics of Northern Ireland. The prominence of the street names is significant, for the novel is partly a paean to Belfast and its people. In the middle, McLiam Wilson briefly pauses the plot to voice a lyrical ode to his hometown. In a typically daring piece of writing reminiscent of the style of the American Thomas Wolfe, he describes how, in the wee hours of the morning, he can sense Belfast's stories in the quiet of its streets, when "all the streets are poetry streets." Yet if that sounds sentimental, the novel is not. Though written with love, the book is also a penetrating satirical portrait of his troubled birthplace. While being "dead satirical," as Chuckie puts it, McLiam Wilson manages also to be very funny. He plays with the routine Belfast absurdities that have developed after almost thirty years of the "Troubles." One running joke refers to the litter of acronyms-used as shorthand for political parties, paramilitary groups, slogans, and curses-that covers the city's walls. His rich cast of characters conveys superbly the mordant comedy of Belfast conversation as Jake and Chuckie meet regularly with their friends Slat, Septic, and Donal. Then there is Aoirghe, the middle-class Irish Republican radical whose name sounds like a bad cough; Chuckie's mother Peggy, a typical working class martyr-mother who in the course of the novel achieves a surprising liberation; and Max, a beautiful American woman who inexplicably succumbs to Chuckie's approaches. In the novel's second half social satire gives way to sharp political satire. Although he grew up a Catholic in the same part of Belfast as Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, McLiam Wilson has no time for the evasions of Irish Republican politics. In a disturbing chapter he confronts the realities of terrorism and the political fudging of those realities. The chapter is a pure set-up; a new character is introduced but one senses that she is going to be there only briefly. The predictability of the tragedy that ensues does not detract from the passionate anger with which McLiam Wilson writes. Afterwards the author takes aim directly at Adams (called Eve in the book; no need for too much subtlety) and at his nationalist party, Sinn Fein. That party's name is usually translated as "Ourselves Alone." In a brilliant flight of satirical invention that may well catch on in Belfast pubs, McLiam Wilson plausibly translates it a shade differently, and lampoons Sinn Fein throughout the novel as the "Just Us" party. To any young novelist Belfast presents a dramatic gift of a subject, but one that is liable to blow up when unwrapped. This is a city where real life holds more drama than fiction and objectivity is impossible; how to address the grim political violence is a consuming question. In his brilliant first novel Ripley Bogle, McLiam Wilson had wisely used the Troubles only as background. In Eureka Street, he shows himself ready to face the subject squarely. He does so with notable courage and with a fire in his belly.
Rating:
Summary: Understated Look at Belfast
Review: Wilson's "Eureka Street" is a look at Belfast that is not redily available in the U.S. The character's are not. They are people with definative characteristics. The interwoven tale using different narration techniques lets the story unfold and does not overload the reader with unending minutia that is, unfortunately, all too common in fiction today.
A great book that would be five stars, but I'm waiting for his next book, which I'm sure will not dissapoint.
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