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Chicago’s Far North Side, a few decades ago—a rough-and-tumble place, awash with racial tensions and petty crime.
Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do—and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it.
This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.
Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do—and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it.
This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.
Price: $9.99
Publisher: Tortoise Books
Imprint: Tortoise Books
Series: New Chicago Classics
Publication Date:
12 November 2024
ISBN: 9781948954969
Format: eBook
BISACs:
FICTION / Literary, FICTION / City Life, FICTION / Urban & Street Lit, FICTION / Crime
“A raucous but soulful account of growing up on the mean streets of Chicago, and the choices kids are forced to make on a daily basis. This cool, incendiary rites-of-passage novel is the real deal.” — Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
"Like Stuar Dybek's Douglas Park, Gwendolyn Brooks's Bronzeville, or Nelson Algren's Division Street, Bill Hillmann's Edgewater is a unique literary evocation of the city." — Chicago Tribune
“Bill Hillmann's The Old Neighborhood is like a right hook to the chin with brass knuckles, crackling with both bravery and urgency. Brilliantly evoking Nelson Algren's Neon Wilderness and Richard Price's The Wanderers, the novel is unflinchingly honest in its depictions of class and race, a deft portrait of our sometimes-less-than-fair city.” — Joe Meno, best-selling author of Hairstyles of the Damned
“A powerful rites-of-passage novel.” — The Week
“(A) grittily beautiful, highly anticipated debut novel, which tackles such issues as white flight, the effect of violence on families, and the vicious cycle of gang activity.” — Electric Literature
“Hillmann's knowledge of his subject matter and his description of place always prevail. The Old Neighborhood is a vivid and honest coming-of-age story about a neighborhood that, even with all its violence and loss, is still Joey Walsh's beloved home.” — Newcity
“(A) gritty and compelling account of growing up on Chicago's North Side.” — Largehearted Boy
“Bill Hillmann is one of the last (and most serious) Hemingwayites.” — Cuarto Poder
“Fantastic.” — Jot Down
“Bill Hillmann is an author who knows Chicago.” — BBC Radio
“An extraordinary debut.”— Book Slam
“Hillmann knows the streets, and he also knows how to tell stories—you might know his work from the Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, and NPR. So it's not surprising to see him deliver a big, sprawling, lacerating, steely-eyed account of one young man's coming of age in a mixed-race family in Chicago. Joe's life spirals downward after his older brother commits a gangland murder; will it head back up? VERDICT: Unvarnished and absorbing; for readers who want to know.” — Library Journal
“Best New Book” — Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Reader, Best of Chicago 2014
Featured on Dateline (CNN), The Today Show (NBC), Antena 3 (Spain), CYLTV Segovia (Spain) People magazine, and NPR.
"Like Stuar Dybek's Douglas Park, Gwendolyn Brooks's Bronzeville, or Nelson Algren's Division Street, Bill Hillmann's Edgewater is a unique literary evocation of the city." — Chicago Tribune
“Bill Hillmann's The Old Neighborhood is like a right hook to the chin with brass knuckles, crackling with both bravery and urgency. Brilliantly evoking Nelson Algren's Neon Wilderness and Richard Price's The Wanderers, the novel is unflinchingly honest in its depictions of class and race, a deft portrait of our sometimes-less-than-fair city.” — Joe Meno, best-selling author of Hairstyles of the Damned
“A powerful rites-of-passage novel.” — The Week
“(A) grittily beautiful, highly anticipated debut novel, which tackles such issues as white flight, the effect of violence on families, and the vicious cycle of gang activity.” — Electric Literature
“Hillmann's knowledge of his subject matter and his description of place always prevail. The Old Neighborhood is a vivid and honest coming-of-age story about a neighborhood that, even with all its violence and loss, is still Joey Walsh's beloved home.” — Newcity
“(A) gritty and compelling account of growing up on Chicago's North Side.” — Largehearted Boy
“Bill Hillmann is one of the last (and most serious) Hemingwayites.” — Cuarto Poder
“Fantastic.” — Jot Down
“Bill Hillmann is an author who knows Chicago.” — BBC Radio
“An extraordinary debut.”— Book Slam
“Hillmann knows the streets, and he also knows how to tell stories—you might know his work from the Chicago Tribune, Salon.com, and NPR. So it's not surprising to see him deliver a big, sprawling, lacerating, steely-eyed account of one young man's coming of age in a mixed-race family in Chicago. Joe's life spirals downward after his older brother commits a gangland murder; will it head back up? VERDICT: Unvarnished and absorbing; for readers who want to know.” — Library Journal
“Best New Book” — Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Reader, Best of Chicago 2014
Featured on Dateline (CNN), The Today Show (NBC), Antena 3 (Spain), CYLTV Segovia (Spain) People magazine, and NPR.
Dr. Bill Hillmann is a full-time professor of English and Communications at East-West University in Chicago. He is the author of three books—the novel The Old Neighborhood, and the memoirs Mozos and The Pueblos—and is turning The Old Neighborhood into a trilogy. His writing has appeared at CNN, NPR, and VICE, and in the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Mail, the Toronto Star, and various others. He created the National College Story Slam competition, where students from across the country compete telling five-minute personal stories. Hillmann is a former Chicago Golden Gloves boxing champion and union construction laborer, and is married to Paula Andion Zabalza.