John McMillan 
The Soul of the City 

FICTION / LITERARY
The Soul of the City is a tale of two cities, Belfast and London, in the heady, liberating days of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Young Jim Mitchell moves through a succession of jobs, girlfriends and apartments in the quest for personal fulfillment and his dream of becoming a writer in the face of often dispiriting circumstances. There is the trauma of his affair with Maureen, an older, married woman, and the trap of his career on the unrelenting white-collar production line of the Ministry of Truth, against the background of civil rights protest and the onset of the troubles in Belfast.Escaping to the space and freedom of London, Jim tries to live the dream of the bohemian writer but all too soon there is the pressing need to earn a living in the more mundane occupations on offer in the metropolis. Just when all seems lost, Jim meets and falls in love with the beautiful Anglo- Irish student Bridget and is drawn into an exciting student-hippy milieu of experimentation, idealism and fun.However, such pleasures are by definition transient and the young couple, Jim and Bridget, must strike out on their own, exploring love, intimacy and enlightenment together in their ongoing search for the soul of the city.

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John Mc Millan writes with an unfailing eye for the telling detail and an irrepressible native humour. He balances an acute social awareness and sense of history with a strong lyrical feeling for the underlying meaning and beauty of life.The search for the soul of the city is nothing less than the search for the soul of a man and a woman in our time.