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EUREKA STREET

Name: EUREKA STREET
Author: Robert McLiam Wilson
ISBN: 1-55970-396-2

by Robert McLiam Wilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1997

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The first of this Irish author's acclaimed novels to be published here is a surprisingly tender, complex take on life and love in Belfast at the mean-street level, where horrors mysteriously transmogrify into things of hope and beauty. Catholic narrator Jake Jackson is a paragon of conflicted allegiances: His best friend is a Protestant; he himself is an ex- tough guy who wants only to live peaceably in his house on Poetry Street with his cat; and six months after his last love left him, he longs to be in a relationship but insults every woman drawn to his handsome face. Meanwhile, his fat, balding, working-class friend Chuckie has problems of his own over on Eureka Street, though to Jake those are to die for: Chuckie has somehow become the love object of a beautiful American, who mauls him to new heights of sexual bliss; and for reasons equally obscure, financiers are suddenly throwing big money at his pie-in-the-sky ecumenical schemes. He brings Jake along for the venture-capital ride, but there are periodic reality checks. Chuckie has to go to the America in pursuit of his departed, pregnant lover, leaving Jake behind to go a few verbal rounds with her pretty, arch-nationalist roommate, who excoriates him for his mild-mannered take on the Troubles. The bloody streets of Belfast offer impediments to lighthearted fancy as well: Chuckie's mother goes into deep shock at being an eyewitness to a massive IRA lunch-counter bombing in which 17 are killed, and a street urchin Jake befriended is beaten nearly to death for peeing on an IRA chief's car. In the new hope offered by a cease-fire, though, love has time to conquer all. The plot twists are over the top at times, but the characters are genuine, often funny, and Wilson's evident love for the long- suffering city itself is an inspired thread that binds the story gloriously together.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997

ISBN: 1-55970-396-2

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Arcade

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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STRANGERS IN BUDAPEST

by Jessica Keener ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 14, 2017

Expect readers of this unpleasant hate poem to Budapest to cancel any plans they've made to travel there.

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Budapest in 1995 is supposedly on the brink of post-communist economic revival, but the American expats who inhabit Keener’s second novel (Night Swim, 2013) can neither adjust to the city’s deep-seated complexity nor escape the problems they hoped to leave back home.

Annie and Will arrive with their adopted baby, Leo, so Will can pursue a startup creating “communication networks.” Unfortunately, Will, as seen through Annie’s eyes, is a research nerd with little aptitude for entrepreneurship. Annie hopes to escape what she considers intrusive involvement by the social worker who arranged Leo’s adoption. A one-time social worker herself (an irony Annie misses), she makes ham-handed attempts to help the locally hated Roma population. After eight months, Will has yet to close a deal when his former boss Bernardo, a glad-hander Annie doesn’t trust, shows up with an enticing offer. Bernardo hires Stephen, another expat, who has moved to Budapest to connect with his parents’ homeland; they fled Hungary for America after the 1956 uprising but never recovered emotionally. The story of his father’s suicide touches a chord in Annie, herself haunted by a tragic accident that destroyed her family’s happiness when she was 4. Meanwhile, 76-year-old Edward is in Budapest to track down his late daughter Deborah’s husband, Van. Edward believes Van murdered Deborah though the official cause of death was related to her multiple sclerosis. The only character besides Annie with a revealed inner life, Edward is embittered by his experience as a Jewish WWII soldier. He disapproved of Deborah’s hippie lifestyle and her attraction to men he considered losers, like Van. Over Will’s objections, and the readers’ disbelief, bleeding-heart Annie agrees to help Edward find Van. A bad idea. As for Budapest itself—polluted, in physical disrepair, plagued by an ugly history, and populated by rude, corrupt, and bigoted locals—the author strongly implies that the misery and mayhem Annie experiences are the city’s fault.

Expect readers of this unpleasant hate poem to Budapest to cancel any plans they've made to travel there.

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-61620-497-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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OF MICE AND MEN

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936

Steinbeck is a genius and an original.

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Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.

This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.