Eureka Street

Reading is, for me, a necessary pleasure. There are periods when I can't find any exciting books and I drag myself along a bit, but every so often, as in this case, I come across real gems that I wish would never end, despite the speed at which I devour them.

Eureka Street is a novel whose protagonist is not a man, but an entire city: Belfast. A sort of chorus that emerges despite the divisions.

The Belfast the author writes about is that of the 1990s, the Belfast of the IRA and the Unionists waging war on one another, who in the novel are relegated to little more than background noise. I loved it perhaps even more because I once visited the very Belfast that is the protagonist of this book. I saw with my own eyes soldiers with heavy weapons on street corners, life carrying on despite the bombs and the attacks, the Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods divided by barbed wire.

Eureka Street is like a hymn to life, true street poetry that only an author who has also been homeless could conceive.

The gentle strength it conveys is the same as the image of a flower blooming between concrete and asphalt🌱🌼

Highly recommended to everyone! 📖

m.m.