"All stories are love stories", begins Eureka Street. Set in Belfast before and after the latest cease-fire, it takes us into the lives and families of Chuckie Lurgan and Jake Jackson, a Protestant and a Catholic - unlikely pals and staunch allies in a world of Northern Irish troubles, a world where your street address can either save your life or send it up the creek, depending on whom you run into. The barometric pressure of Belfast's moods is measured in graffiti. Everybody recognizes "IRA" and "UVF" and "FTQ" ("F-k the Queen"), as well as "FTP" (it concerns the pope). But when "OTG" begins appearing on walls throughout the city, the locals are stumped. A new paramilitary organization? A coded message of redemption? A joke? The harder they try to decipher "OTG", the more it reflects the passions and paranoias that govern and divide them. Chuckie and Jake are as mystified as everyone else. In the meantime they try to carve out lives for themselves in the battlefield they call home. Chuckie falls in love with an American who is living in Belfast to escape the violence in her own land; the best Jake can do is to get into a hilarious and remorseless war of insults with a beautiful but spitfire republican whose Irish name, properly pronounced, sounds to him like someone choking. All stories may be love stories, but the road to the real thing never ran in a straight line, and sometimes is blockaded by checkpoints and barbed wire. The real love story in Eureka Street involves Belfast - the city's soul and spirit, its will to survive the worst it can do to itself.

All stories are love stories, begins Eureka Street, Robert McLiam Wilson's brilliant, irreverent, bighearted, and side-achingly funny novel. Set in Belfast before and after the latest cease-fire, it takes us into the lives of Chuckie Lurgan and Jake Jackson, a Protestant and a Catholic -- friends and allies in a world of troubles, where your street address can either save your life or send it up the creek, depending on whom you run into. It is also a world whose pulse is measured in graffiti, such as "FTQ" ("F - - k the Queen"), which everyone recognizes, just as they do "FTP" (it concerns the pope). But when "OTG" begins appearing on Belfast's walls, no one knows what it stands for. Chuckie and Jake are as mystified as everyone else. In the meantime, they are trying to carve out lives for themselves in the war zone they call home. Framed by a land of deadly violence and life-giving mother wit, explosive passion and the dead weight of inherited hatreds, Eureka Street is a bravura performance that will surprise you, delight you, and keep you glued to every page. The American debut of a dazzling talent.