Robert McLiam Wilson is probably the greatest author of the last decade... never felt like this after reading his books... this one is probably the most amazing you would ever have in hands ... well, not really, as all his books are so great...
go for it... thanks mr. McLiam Wilson... thank you !

Through the beneficence of a marvelous person I was finally able to read this book. It is full of the pain and absurdity of living. Mr. McLiam Wilson has an amazing capacity for observation and the recording of that observation. I am truly sorry that this little book is out of print. I sincerely can not describe the feelings that this little book evoked in me. I can recommend, however, that if you like any of McLiam Wilson's books that you beg, borrow, hound the publisher or do something drastic to get your hands on "Manfred's Pain". You won't forget it.

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!

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.

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.

After reading very favorable reviews, I got the impression this book would be about an "Irish Holden Caulfield." (Catcher in the Rye.) There were some similairities. They are both young men narrating the story of their own demise from formal education to homelessness. Both speak directly to the reader, telling us what we would think of something, then reiterating. (you'd love it, you really would.) But I found Ripley Bogle to be a difficult book to get through. The author uses such extreme vocabulary, there were times I wish he'd put away his thesaurus and just tell the story. There were some very witty passages and extremely detailed descriptions, but a lot of excess. This is just my humble opinion, but I don't care for the books where the writing is a lot more noticable than the story.

I was simply astonished by the fact that he was this good at the start. Ripley Bogle is no worse than Eureka Street, although maybe a little more juvenile. It does not have the happy end of Eureka Street, and it is much more cynical, in the way young and precocious writers often are. However, as literature it is even more innovative than Eureka Street, and often it feels much more immediate and honest.

McLiam Wilson shows his youth in this first novel, but his Dickensian attention to detail is usually a thrill to behold. I'm so sick of writing being a by-the-way of telling stories. Though not without the wit present in Eureka Street, the operative adjective here is "beautiful:" every word is where it should be, every sentence is in its rightful place, and the book leaves one thinking of the author, "how does he DO that?" For readers who want to read a book written using language to benefit a plot instead of just convey it, Ripley Bogle is a godsend. The end will make your jaw drop.