Paperboy: An Enchanting True Story of a Belfast Paperboy Coming to Terms with the Troubles

By Tony Macaulay

It’s Belfast, 1975. The city lies under the dark cloud of the Troubles, and hatred fills the air like smoke. But Tony Macaulay has just turned twelve and he’s got a new job. He’s going to be a paperboy. And come rain or shine – or bombs and mortar – he will deliver…

Paperboy lives in Upper Shankill, Belfast, in the heart of the conflict between Loyalists and Republicans. Bombings are on the evening news, rubble lies where buildings once stood, and rumours spread like wildfire about the IRA and the UDA.

But Paperboy lives in a world of Doctor Who, Top of the Pops and fish suppers. His battles are fought with all the passion of Ireland’s opposing sides – but against acne, the dentist and the ‘wee hoods’ who rob his paper money. On his rounds he hums songs by the Bay City Rollers, dreams about outer space and dreams even more about the beautiful Sharon Burgess.

In this touching, funny and nostalgic memoir, Tony Macaulay recounts his days growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, the harrowing years which saw neighbour fighting neighbour and brother fighting brother. But in the midst of all this turmoil, Paperboy, a scrappy upstart with a wicked sense of humour and sky-high dreams, dutifully goes about his paper round. He is a good paperboy, so he is.

Paperboy proves that happiness can be found even in the darkest of times; it is a story that will charm your socks off, make you laugh out loud and brings to life the culture, stories and colourful characters of a very different – but very familiar – time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Nov 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9780007449248

Tony Macaulay

Dr. Tony Macaulay is an author, peacebuilder and broadcaster from Belfast. He has spent the past 35 years working to build peace and reconciliation at home and abroad. Awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Ulster University for services to literature and peacebuilding, Tony has been a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio and is a regular speaker at universities and colleges in Europe and the USA.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Recruitment and Induction

Iwas too young, so I was. You had to be a teenager to be a paperboy for Oul’ Mac. He gave my big brother the paper round in our street when he was thirteen. By the time I was twelve I was jealous of the money and the status. I couldn’t wait an extra year to get my foot on this first rung of the employment ladder. So one wet Belfast night I persuaded my brother to introduce me to Oul’ Mac and to inform him of my eagerness to enter his employment.

My first job interview was a nerve-wracking experience.

‘Have you any rounds going, Mr Mac?’ I asked. (You never called him Oul’ to his face.)

‘Aye, alright,’ said Oul’ Mac, ‘but no thievin’, or you’re out!’

I concluded that my application for the post had been successful. He hadn’t even asked if I was thirteen yet, so I didn’t have to tell lies. Lies were a sin back then.

So, at the age of twelve, I set out on my career as a paperboy. My fear of age exposure gradually dissolved as I approached my thirteenth birthday, when I would become completely legit. I no longer had nightmares about being arrested by the RUC for underage paper delivery.

No sooner had I taken up my new position than my big brother decided that paper rounds were only for wee kids and he summarily left the arena of newspaper delivery entirely to me. I did nothing to dissuade him. I was delighted. Now the papers would be my exclusive territory. My wee brother was still more interested in Lego and Milky Bars and Watch with Mother, but I could sense that he envied my new career and was longing for the day when he too could follow in the family tradition.

Oul’ Mac liked me. He said I was a good, honest boy. This was important to him. It meant you wouldn’t steal the paper money that you collected from the customers on a Friday evening. He was a tough boss, though. He sacked wee lads all the time. Half our street had been sacked by Oul’ Mac. But if you did a good job, with no cheek to the pensioners and no thieving, he didn’t shout at you much and your position was secure. Oul’ Mac had been a newsagent on the Upper Shankill for decades: no one could remember anybody else ever delivering the papers up our way. But he was getting on a bit now. Oul’ Mac smoked and said ‘f**k’ a lot. Of course, most men smoked and said ‘f**k’ a lot, but Oul’ Mac did both, simultaneously and ceaselessly. He was a thin man with no beer belly to hold up his tatty trousers, so he was always hoisting them up in between cigarette drags. I never saw him smile, but sometimes his eyes twinkled and I couldn’t work out whether he was coughing or laughing. On these rare occasions when his mouth opened wide, I would worry for his last few wobbly, yellowing teeth, teetering on the brink.

Oul’ Mac had dark yellow fingers, where the nicotine of ten thousand cigarettes blended with the printing ink of a million newspapers. His skin was dark and leathery because he was outdoors most of the time, filling and emptying his van. His face and arms were also a yellowy hue. Mrs Mac said he was bad with his liver. He had only a few remaining tufts of hair, mostly white, but in places the same dark yellow as his stained hands. His hair always stood upright, gelled in place by the binding glue of a million magazines on his fingers.

Oul’ Mac’s van had also seen better times. It was the same shade of dirty yellow as his hair and nails, apart from the rusty red bits around the bottom that sometimes fell off when it went over security ramps. The van spluttered around our puddled streets every day, the exhaust pipe just about hanging in there. Whenever you went outside, Oul’ Mac’s Ford Transit was always there on the street, like dogs and marbles and soldiers.

I would wait at the end of our street every night for the van to arrive. You heard the roar as it struggled up the hill in the distance, sounding like some part might drop off at any moment, in the titanic struggle between gravity, tons of paper and the failing power of an ageing Ford Transit engine. But Mac always made it, even in the snow when you hoped he wouldn’t so you could have snowball fights with the other paperboys. Even through the barricades, when you feared his temper might get him hurt as he told the paramilitaries to f**k off and give his head peace.

Often the papers were late and the reason was right there in the headlines – dark words on grey pages. I seldom read the Belfast Telegraph, though. It was full of charmless men talking about ‘them and us’, and depressing bombs and killings, and why it was all the other side’s fault, and, sure, I was living in the middle of the whole thing anyway. I was more interested in tips and TV and bonfires and music and outer space and Sharon Burgess. Sharon Burgess was lovely. I fancied her, so I did. She was my first sweetheart. I wanted her to be my own personal Olivia Newton-John.

Showaddywaddy were in the charts and the tartan tones of the Bay City Rollers played on the radio. Dad enjoyed the blonde one in Pan’s People dancing on Top of the Pops, when the Osmonds from America were No. 1 and couldn’t get to the BBC in London, where Harold Wilson with the pipe was Prime Minister. Elvis was getting fatter and I was getting taller.

We bought our first colour TV on hire purchase, complete with miraculous push buttons to switch between the three television channels. In Blue Peter on BBC 1, Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Peter Purves showed me how to make an Apollo spacecraft from toilet rolls and silver milk-bottle tops. I wept when Freda, the Blue Peter tortoise, didn’t make it through the winter in a cardboard box held together by sticky back plastic.

Then came our first black-and-white portable TV, clunky and bright red, with a handle on top. My big brother would use it to watch Little House on the Prairie in secret in the sitting room (hard men were not supposed to care about the trials of Laura Ingalls). Meanwhile, my wee brother would watch Romper Room on UTV, waiting excitedly for Miss Helen to see him through her magic mirror and say his name at the end of every programme. My granny kept a tally of Irish-sounding names, to check if Miss Helen was seeing more Catholics than Protestants.

It was the electrifying age of Doctor Who with the long scarf who travelled in the TARDIS through time and space to save the universe. The Thunderbirds blasted off from Tracy Island to save the world, and Ian Paisley shouted a lot down a microphone at the City Hall to save Ulster.

My mother watched old people in a pub on Coronation Street on UTV, and fancied Tom Jones when he sang ‘The Green Green Grass of Home’ on BBC 1. The appeal of both was lost on me. I rarely pushed the BBC 2 button, but my father did and he watched long documentaries and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, laughing hysterically when the posh Englishmen wore dresses, talked in high-pitched voices and did silly walks. The family was safe and happy, and everyone was still alive, apart from my other granda.

Parallel trousers were the fashion statement to die for, and tartan turn-ups and trouser legs were savagely shortened to every shin on the Shankill. Platform shoes were all the rage, and you would sprain your ankle for the sake of style when you jumped a fence and landed awkwardly in dog’s dirt after raiding old Mr Butler’s orchard, even though your mother had told you to ‘leave the poor oul’ fella alone because he was bad with his nerves’.

The Co-op Superstore in town was always on fire, while the chippy down the road was always open. Familiar smells were the hint of Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps on the breath, the whiff of vinegar from warm fish suppers in fresh newspapers, and an aromatic mix of Brut aftershave, Benson & Hedges cigarettes and burning double-decker buses that often hung heavy in the air.

For me, those years followed a familiar pattern, punctuated by School Term, Summer Holidays, the Eleventh Night, the Twelfth of July, Hallowe’en and Christmas Day. The changing seasons diverted my attention from pencil sharpeners to candy floss, from flags and bonfires to sparklers and Santa. Every week followed a well-trodden path too, like an experienced paperboy doing his rounds. School started again every Monday, Scouts was on Wednesdays, Top of the Pops was on Thursdays, the Europa Hotel got blown up on Fridays, the Westy Disco was on Saturdays, and on the seventh day I had to have a bath and go to Sunday school.

Life was action-packed and fast-moving, like an episode of Starsky and Hutch. We had thirty-minute school classes and five-minute bomb warnings. One minute, I would be in the classroom learning about the transverse section of an earthworm and the next I was in the playground learning about girls and perfecting the lead guitar section of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. If I wasn’t being good by having a jumble sale for the Biafran babies or going to ‘wee meetin’s’ to sing songs about Jesus, then I was being bad by bullying a wee ginger boy with National Health glasses or going to discos with rock-and-roll songs about sex and drugs and other things I didn’t know how to do.

But as soon as I was employed, all of these distractions melted into the background of my existence. Being a paperboy took top priority. It was my vocation, so it was. Oul’ Mac had discovered me. He had entrusted me with a great responsibility, and I was determined to fulfil the potential he had clearly discerned in my candid blue eyes, skinny four-foot frame and stringy, straight black hair.

Every night when Oul’ Mac arrived in our street with the papers, he would fling open the double doors at the back of the van and jump up inside to dispense both papers and judgement. We paperboys held our collective breath. This was Oul’ Mac’s stage and if a customer had complained or if your paper money hadn’t added up, a gritty drama would unfold. I witnessed several summary sackings at the van doors, when the guilty faced the humiliation of having to hand over their paperbags in front of their former colleagues. Oul’ Mac would snatch the bag roughly from the dirty-handed guilty one, who would then run down the street, telling him where he could stick his paper round.

Your paperbag was an important tool of the trade. Actually, it was the only one. On my first day, I was handed a clean white canvas bag, strong enough to hold a hundred Tellys. As my career progressed, the ever-darkening colour of my bag was a testament to my level of experience as a paperboy.

On my first night Oul’ Mac handed me a database of my customers. It was a list of street numbers scrawled on the back of one of the dirty wee paper sweetie bags he used for the humbugs he sold in the shop.

‘This is my mission if I choose to accept it,’ I thought, imagining I was an American spy being sent out on Mission Impossible. I followed the numbers on the dirty wee paper bag as seriously as any secret agent hoping to crack a code to stop evil Russians from trying to take over the world. I criss-crossed the streets between odd numbers and even numbers, identifying target letterboxes and then launching paper missiles through them.

Some customers had impressive shiny brass numbers screwed onto their front doors, while others had simply painted their house number on a gatepost with some white gloss paint left over from painting the skirting board in their hall. Some of the houses had lush botanical gardens, while others had paved over the grass to park a motorbike. I learned that some gates were there to keep dogs and small children in and must always be closed, while other gates were for impressing the neighbours or just for swinging on.

On my virgin paper round, I was tentative and careful, just feeling my way. It was my first time, so I jumped no fences and closed all gates. It took me a while to work out exactly how to fold the paper and insert it correctly into the letterbox.

I smiled at all my customers, even at the ones who scowled back, like Mr Black from No. 13, who felt compelled to comment: ‘They’ll be delivering your paper in a pram next!’

I wanted to develop good customer relations from the outset. I met Mrs Grant from No. 2 at her front gate. She was just back from the shops with a bagful of pigs’ trotters from the butchers and a prescription from the chemist for her Richard’s throat. I opened her gate and offered to carry her shopping bags.

‘Och, thank you, love,’ she said, ‘I’m late for the dinner and my Richard’s in bed with his throat.’

‘I’m the new paperboy,’ I proclaimed proudly.

‘Och, that’s lovely, love. Close the gate after you,’ Mrs Grant replied.

I could tell we were going to have an excellent customer/supplier relationship. My mind was already drifting towards an assessment of Mrs Grant’s tip potential. My big brother said the good tippers would tell you to keep the change, while the ‘stingy bastards’ would expect every last halfpenny, even at Christmas.

My first few papers were awkwardly folded and ended up a little torn around the edges, but by the time I had delivered my final Belfast Telegraph on that first night, I had become nearly competent. The last newspaper of the night was withdrawn from my paper bag, folded perfectly and delivered swiftly within a mere ten seconds.

As I bounced away from No. 102, I heard the door unbolt behind me, and then the voice of Mrs Charlton with the Scottish accent calling: ‘Och, that’s great, love. Don’t forget my Sunday Post – and will you bring my bin round the back on a Wednesday, and I’ll give you 10p for a wee 99 from the poke man?’

Mrs Charlton had ‘good tipper’ written all over her.

I knew already that I was going to be great at this. My hands were so black now that I had smudged the writing on the dirty wee paper bag Oul’ Mac had given me. I would need this vital source of information with me for the rest of the week, by which time I would have committed all my odd and even numbers to memory. It was like learning algebra, but with a purpose.

When I got back to our house after my first paper round, my mother was in the living room on the sewing machine, making another dress for a swanky lady on the Malone Road. Mammy was always sewing for someone, and she had the very latest sewing machine from the Great Universal Club Book. It was so expensive she was allowed to pay it off over sixty weeks instead of the usual twenty.

‘Well, how did it go, love?’ she enquired.

‘Aye, no probs!’ I replied, clearly delighted with my first day of paid employment.

‘Was any of them oul’ dolls cheeky to you?’ she asked.

‘No, Mammy, they were all dead on. Mrs Grant and yer Scotchy woman are going to give me a good tip, so they are, but Mr Black thinks I’m too young to be a paperboy,’ I confided.

‘Never mind that oul’ get,’ Mammy said. ‘Sure, he’s too old himself to be anything!’

‘Where’s Daddy?’ I asked.

‘He’s doin’ overtime to pay for the new suite in the sitting room,’ she explained. ‘He thinks it’s great you’ve got yourself a wee job now. He says no son of his will ever be working late in a foundry three nights a week.’

Every evening Oul’ Mac would cut the white string that held the Sixth Edition Belfast Telegraphs tightly in a bulging batch, releasing forty-eight copies into my care. I would then fill my paperbag and sling it over my shoulder. At the start of the round, my shoulder ached, especially on Thursdays and Fridays, when the papers had extra pages, and the weekly colour magazines arrived. A bagful of Belly Tellys later, the lessening of the burden over my shoulder would be matched by a lightness of spirit and the realisation that my work for the day was almost done.

On my second Thursday in the job I was happily delivering my Tellys as usual, when Titch McCracken came running round the corner clutching a box of Curly Wurlys and I was faced with the first ethical conundrum of my career. I knew by the guilty look on Titch’s face that he had been shoplifting in the Mace again.

‘Where’d ya get all them there Curly Wurlys?’ I enquired.

‘Found them, so I did!’ replied Titch unconvincingly.

Without even stopping, he threw a Curly Wurly into my paper bag and disappeared down an entry like a drug dealer in Starsky and Hutch. For the remainder of my paper round I pondered the morality of accepting stolen goods and delayed tucking into my criminal Curly Wurly. However, just as I was approaching the door of my final customer of the night, I noticed that a disaster had unfolded inside my paperbag. As I reached inside to grab Mrs Dunne’s Belfast Telegraph, I discovered that the front page was plastered with melted chocolate from my illegal Curly Wurly. The inside of my paperbag looked like a dirty protest in Long Kesh. There was melted chocolate smeared all over a picture of Harold Wilson with the pipe. I stopped still in the street. I had to think very quickly. So, I came up with a cunning plan, like John Steed with the umbrella in The Avengers.

I ran home to check if our newspaper had been delivered. Sure enough, the Belly Telly was still on the floor in the hall, nestled underneath my wee brother’s bright orange space hopper. It had been perfectly delivered through the letterbox by Billy Cooper, one of my fellow professionals. Billy was cross-eyed but never missed a letterbox. As I removed the front and back pages, to replace the Curly-Wurly-flavoured pages on Mrs Dunne’s newspaper, I noticed our back page was badly crumpled. My wee brother had been bouncing up and down the hall on his space hopper when the paper had arrived and he had crushed the sports page.

I rushed to the under-stairs cupboard and took out my mother’s iron and ironing board as quietly as possible, while the rest of my family were transfixed by The Generation Game on BBC 1 in the living room. I swiftly ironed the back page until it was completely smooth, the same way I had watched Mr Hudson do it in Upstairs Downstairs. Then I carefully removed the chocolate-stained pages from Mrs Dunne’s newspaper and replaced them with the newly ironed pages. I put the chocolaty pages around our newspaper and strategically smeared some melted Curly Wurly on the space hopper, for the purposes of sibling incrimination.

I rushed out the door, back towards Mrs Dunne’s house, hoping she wouldn’t notice the slightly scorched footballers on the back page.

Mrs Dunne worked in the chemist, wore lots of make up and lived on her own. Mr Dunne, who wore a cravat, had moved across the water the previous year. Mrs Dunne didn’t tell anyone at first. It was only when the neighbours noticed that the noise of Shirley Bassey records blaring from the Dunne’s sitting room had stopped that they realised Mr Dunne had left. Mrs Dunne was lovely looking. She had blonde hair in a bob, like Jill in Crossroads on UTV. She was very friendly to the various service providers who called to the Shankill. She was always asking them in for a wee cuppa and a scone. One day there had been a big queue at the ice cream van after she invited the poke man in with a 99. When he eventually emerged from Mrs Dunne’s to look after his customers, our ice cream man looked very pleased with himself. He obviously appreciated Mrs Dunne’s cherry scones just as much as she enjoyed his pokes.

That night as I arrived at Mrs Dunne’s front door with the regenerated newspaper, the insurance man was just leaving, fixing his tie and his hair. I shyly handed Mrs Dunne her bespoke Belfast Telegraph. She smiled at me and said, ‘Och, you’re a quare good wee paperboy, so you are.’

I realised, with immense relief, that I had successfully averted a potentially career-threatening disaster.

By the end of my third week of paper delivery I was desperate for some feedback from Oul’ Mac. It seemed to me to be going very well and there had been no complaints, but I longed for Oul’ Mac to tell me I had as much dedication as Roy Castle on Record Breakers. I asked my big brother if Oul’ Mac ever told you how you were getting on in the job.

His reply was not at all helpful: ‘Only if he gives you a good kick up the arse!’

Finally, one wet night I plucked up the courage, and as Oul’ Mac was dispensing my papers from the van I asked him directly, man to man, ‘Am I doin’ alright with

Reviews for Paperboy

[laurensx · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

With humour, Tony Macaulay recalls his early years as a paperboy, during "the Troubles". During this unstable time in Ireland's history, young Tony is attempting to navigate the challenging tasks of being a student, having his first part-time job, understanding the violent world around him and becoming a teenager. His teenage obsession with ABBA and the Bay City Rollers, provided an interesting backdrop - and almost melodic background, on which to build his story. It would have been helpful, had the author included a glossary of terms for those of us who are unfamiliar with the idiomatic expressions used in Ireland at that time. It would have also been interesting to include a reference section for some historical facts to be further explained, as this reader wasn't quite familiar with the violence and struggles of the Irish nation.

[jennyo_587543 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

First things first, I won this copy through the Early Reviewers program. That said, it was an entertaining if lightweight read. It's the story of Tony Macaulay's days growing up in Ireland during the Troubles. He sounds like he was a charming and typical kid living in a really strange time and trying to make the best of it. His story reminds us that hate and prejudice are learned habits and we don't have to give in to them. I must be close to Macaulay's age because, even though I'm American, I can remember the Bay City Rollers madness. I might even have a few old lyrics stored in my memory banks. All in all, I'd say this is a delightful summer read.

[tanya8dogearedcopy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Paperboy bills itself as a memoir of a twelve-year old boy who delivers newspapers in Belfast during the times of The Troubles (1970s.) Tony Macauley, an Protestant English boy, lived in the Shankill area of Belfast in the shadow of the peace walls and the commonplace occurrence of pubs being blown up; but despite the violence (both threatened and actualized) that permeated that time and place, Macauley writes a quaint account of being a pacifist paperboy more concerned with The Bay City Rollers, parallels (a type of trousers), and keeping his paper route money hidden from potential muggers. It's an interesting perspective, having been written from the viewpoint of a young teen who had the advantages of being sent to a public school and having encountered others who were not as different as he had been brought up to believe; but the intensity of living on the edge seems blunted by elements of near suburban normalcy. I suspect hearing Macauley tell these stories live is truly engaging, and you can discern a certain echo of his speaking style (e.g. "...so I was," "...so had," and so on); but in many places, there are cut-and paste phrases and repetitive descriptions which break up the over arc of the memoir, and the vernacular of both time and place may need some looking-up as the meaning may not be clear from the context.

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A memoir of growing up in Belfast in the seventies from an eleven-year-old boy's perspective. It is filled with the pop culture of the time from fashion to music. He calls himself "the only pacifist paperboy" and he was determined that nothing would prevent him from delivering his newspapers on time. It is a story that might be more of local interest as it is filled with Belfast idiom and references, but the experiences of this likeable boy will generate many smiles. His thoughts on the concept of "goodies" and "baddies" are particularly poignant: Americans are mostly goodies because of Disney and the Osmonds but on the other hand there were goodies and baddies on Starsky & Hutch, while Russians, provos and Daleks were the worst baddies. His rationale has a childlike innocence and is clearly influenced by television. The events happen around the time when the two opposing religious groups started to consider integration in their combined quest for peace, which at that time was still a long way off. This is cheerful, funny, and optimistic, written in the unaffected frank words of a pre-teen.

[pensivecat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paperboy is the story of a boy growing up during Northern Ireland's 'Troubles' and basically living as normal an adolescence as possible, while trying to be what he termed a 'Pacifist Paperboy', the best one and possibly the only one. Loved the many Doctor Who references; that and the Bay City Rollers really puts you into the time period. A quick and pleasant read.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Newspapers nowadays seem to be delivered by adults driving cars, not neighborhood boys or girls tromping up and down streets on foot or riding on bikes and flinging the paper end over end to land on your doorstep early every morning. But in Tony Macaulay's memoir of almost two years of his life as a paperboy in the late 1970s, this cherished image of kids delivering the paper still stands. Macaulay was an almost 12 year old boy living in Belfast, Ireland when he won the coveted position of paperboy. This job gave him his own money and he took pride in doing his job. It was thrilling to be such a responsible kid. Along with his reminiscing, Macaulay has captured the everyday appeal of a happy childhood. Narrating from his pre-teen self's perspective, he remembers the obsession with fashion, music (specifically the Bay City Rollers), and girls. His observations are witty and entertaining and they are very Irish, with many of the colloquialisms and much of the slang likely to be unfamiliar to American readers. Macaulay grew up during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But by choosing to narrate his memoir from his childhood perspective, he manages to background much of the political atmosphere, religious divide, and violence. He was, of course, always aware of the danger and the fighting but he was equally aware of the thugs and bullies who would steal his paper route money from him if he wasn't ever vigilant. The book is told in self-contained chapters, which detail his loving family, the wants and desires of a kid in late 70s Ireland, his method of coping with the strife in his city, and his own pacifism. The tale is actually an ordinary one after all. There's not a whole lot driving the narrative; it's just snapshots of a young boy's everyday life. There are some hitches in the pacing and the occasional wrinkle in chronology but generally this was a funny and touching picture of the way people, and specifically kids, continue to live their lives even amidst a war.

[brigitte64 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book very much it was easy and fun to read, I grew up in this time so I knew some of the terms and music the author is describing in his story.Maybe teenager from today don`t understand a lot of the terms but a quick search on the internet tells you about the Bay City rollers and "parallels" . I had to google some Irish words like tartan or "wee" . I learned a lot about the conflict in North Ireland and it is always interesting to read this from a standpoint of a teenager who actually lived through this and not the official political opinion. He jumps a little bit around in times but that was not a problem with me. Can`t wait to get his next book.

[karen_o_23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've just finished Paperboy by Tony Macauley, subtitled "an enchanting true story of a Belfast paperboy coming to terms with the Troubles." And once I've given you the subtitle, I don't have to say much more because that's exactly what it is. Through 20 chapters he shares episodes of his life during the roughly two year period from 1975 to 1977, when he was almost 12 years through age 13, delivering papers in West Belfast, Northern Ireland. The book is an intimate look at another culture and gives a better feel for that time and place than any other dozen things I might have picked up. I find myself dragging the iPad with me as I read so I can find out just what are parallels (hint: it's a style of trousers), tartan turn-ups, platform shoes... well, I'm familiar with those. But I had to search for images of the oft mentioned Bay City Rollers to get a good visual of tartan turn-ups and platforms together! And the tales to be told of the violence of the times. He's not heavy handed about it but it is mentioned often and more and more so as time goes by, although the book is episodic and not linear in its organization. Honestly, I couldn't have thought of a better way of getting a picture of day-to-day life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and coming to a better understanding than I've ever had before of just what exactly that period entailed. Now I look forward to his second book, Breadboy, the story of what Paperboy did next. Recommended if you're interested in that time period, want to learn more about life during the Troubles, or if you've ever been a paperboy or lived through the mid-1970s as a young teen just about anywhere; a quick and 'friendly' read.

[timbazzett · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found PAPERBOY, Tony Macaulay's memoir of growing up in Belfast during the never-ending "Troubles" rather disappointing. While the author is adept at portraying the usual problems of adolescence and gives a good sense of the times, mostly through the pop music scene of the mid-70s, particularly the popularity of the Scottish group, The Bay City Rollers, the story chugs along at a too-slow pace with nothing much really happening. Maybe the Belfast angle was simply too 'foreign' for me to identify with, or maybe I am just a little too old to relate to a 70s childhood (I grew up in the 50s). Whatever the problem was, I simply could not get interested in Macaulay's story and gave up after about 125 pages. That was enough for me. I suspect many American readers would have the same problems with this book that I did. Sorry, Mr. Macaulay. For a much better read about an American paperboy, I highly recommend Henry Petroski's PAPERBOY: CONFESSIONS OF A FUTURE ENGINEER , which I read a few years back, and thoroughly enjoyed.

[orteacher · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Before I started "Paperboy" by Tony Macaulay, I was somewhat expecting some version of "Angela's Ashes" except dealing with the troubles in Belfast. Instead I was gifted with a surprisingly upbeat book about how life goes on even when turbulent times surrounds one. I was quickly engaged with 12 year-old Tony and his trials as both a paperboy and intelligent young man who achieves above most of the others in his part of Belfast. Certainly the setting contributes to some of the trials, but they are much the same as like aged kids the world over... sex, siblings, rivalries, parents, adults and school. Mr. Macaulay writes with warmth and wit and the pages fly by. My one complaint is as an American I didn't understand many of the local terms and abbreviations - whatever are "parallel" pants? But by and large, this is a very good read.

[yourotherleft_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tony Macaulay spent his formative years growing up in the working class neighborhood of the Upper Shankill in Belfast during the Troubles of the 1970s. On the one hand, Macaulay's youth is typical. He's eager to follow his brother into an early career of delivering the nightly Belfast Telegraph, he wears the dreadful clothes that were all the rage during the 1970s, gets picked on by his brothers, lives to steal kisses from the lovely Sharon Burgess at the disco, and is in love with the Bay City Rollers, but in a totally "manly" way. On the other hand, Macaulay's youth is spent in a Belfast divided by Peace Walls, plagued by acts of terrorism afflicting everything from bus routes to phone booths, and is fiercely divided between Protestant loyalists to the British government and Catholic supporters of a united Irish Republic whose differences don't seem all that distinct to Macaulay or to us, for that matter.Okay, so the absolute best thing about Paperboy is that Macaulay is hilarious. I can't remember the last time a book made me laugh out loud so often. For this reader, humor is hard to hit spot on in a book. Many authors, I find I don't quite get their sense of humor or their efforts seem forced. Not so in this case. Macaulay's humor easily encompasses both the laughable foibles of his young career as a paperboy as well as the decidedly more serious points of living in a dangerously divided Belfast during the seventies. The easy hilarity in the stories of young Tony jumping fences in his coin-stuffed platforms and parallels to achieve paperboy seniority, waiting for the last guitar lesson of the night behind a girl whose parents were hoping for her to be the next Tammy Wynette (thereafter referred to as "Pammy Wynette"), and kicking a member of the Bay City Rollers as the only "manly" way of expressing appreciation for the band is the stuff laughing out loud is made of. Still extra giggles are reserved for the low income things that shouldn't be funny but are - like all the home improvement projects completed by his dad with supplies he "borrowed" from the foundry where he works and the many would-be affordable things purchased for a weekly fee from the Great Universal Club Book.Paperboy is an appealing book that's more about Macaulay's youth and career as a paperboy than it is about the Troubles that plagued the city of his childhood. That it deals with the Troubles as more of a sideline ever-present reality in young Tony's life rather than as a focus is more a blessing than a curse. Macaulay does a fantastic job of capturing his own childlike perspective in that he's learned to live with being searched for weapons when entering a store, expecting that milk bottles will soon become petrol bombs, and not being able to get home because paramilitaries are bombing buses and have vandalized every phone booth for a couple miles. The downside to dealing with the Troubles on the side, of course, is that if readers go into the book mostly ignorant of the conflicts driving the Troubles, they might well emerge similarly ignorant. Macaulay scores some points for how he successfully immerses readers in his life in 1970s Northern Ireland, but doing so perhaps assumes that readers understand more about recent Irish history than they do, and the conflict, which is probably more or less bewildering to people in the know is mind-boggling to the more ignorant. Macauley's book definitely gave me incentive to dig into the historical background, but some of the book might be lost on people who aren't interested in doing a little extra legwork to set the scene, so to speak. Overall, Paperboy is a laugh-out-loud funny read about one pacifist paperboy's childhood in the scary streets of 1970s Belfast. It's a childhood that might well remind you of your own in spots but for the bombs and the barricades, one that might inspire you to discover more Irish history, and might also remind you that we wouldn't all be so different from each other if we weren't hiding behind the real and imagined walls of the uncompromising ideologies we've created.

[bookwoman247 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the memoir of the author's growing up in Belfast during the Troubles of the 1970's. While it was, of course, grim at times, it was also humorous, joyful, exuberant, and insightful.One remark of the author's, which I found particularly insightful, was how it seemed to him that the more peace walls were built, the more violence occured. (Not a direct quote.)I found this book a real pleasure to read!

[stevesmits · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the memoir of a young boy who lived in the Shankill area of Belfast in the mid-1970's at the height of the troubles. He describes his life as a pre-adolescent who experienced the culture of the times growing into his teenage years amidst the turmoil of that violent period. As a Protestant, Tony was aware of the presence of "paramilitaries" of the UVF and UDA and of the threats posed by the IRA. He certainly understood the sharp divide between the Protestant and Catholic communities. But, this is not a recollection of the political/social milieu of the times; it's more the world of family, school, neighborhoods and coming of age experiences as seen and understood by a boy on the cusp of his teenage years. The author captures the essence of the times, particularly of the pop culture that he and his peers related to. You get a real feeling for the working class world in which he lived, although it's plain that he's miles ahead of his peers in his intelligence and perspectives. I was interested in this book because I had lived in Northern Ireland in the early 70's (in Derry) and witnessed the violence that grew over the two years I was there. A frequent occurence was rioting with stone throwing and petrol bombs carried out by youth very close in age to Tony. I always wondered what were these kids really like and how much they were different from young people in America; how their lives were so different from the teenage years I had relatively recently gone through myself (I was then 22). One evening in a particularly violent span of time (the days right after the internment of suspected IRA terrorists by the British authorities) a bomb was placed outside the flat where my wife and I lived. It seemed clear that the bomb was not directed at us as the ground floor was a commercial establishment. It was reported that the bomb was placed by a very young boy although this was never shown to be actually so. The drift of these kids into violence (carried out methodically and much more viciously by adults) was appaling to contemplate. Although not a participant in the violence around him, Tony's life was shaped by needing to be cautious and living with the disruption to normal life that the violence brought.The book is full of pop culture references that would be familiar to anyone living in Northern Ireland in 1975, but are obscure to today's readers. Similarly, mentions of things like the "twelfth", the Maze and Provos would likely be unfamiliar to the general American reader.At times the recollections of a 12-year old boy seem somewhat refined by the insights of the adult who is writing them. Nonetheless, Macaulay certainly was an imaginative and perceptive child who had a more than typical vigor and enthusiasm for life.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm usually wary of books that have subtitles like this: “an enchanting true story of a Belfast paperboy coming to terms with the Troubles”. However, in this case the subtitle didn't over-promise. I was truly enchanted by the story of “the only pacifist paperboy in West Belfast”, so I was. Maybe it's because I grew up in the same era, and his reminiscences of mid-1970s pop culture struck a chord with me. The Bay City Rollers, ABBA, Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, Farrah Fawcett, Olivia Newton-John, Monty Python, and Star Wars were popular here, too. It did help that I lived in the U.K. for a few years so I understood the difference between terraced houses and semi-detached houses, I know what hire purchase is, I know about Blue Peter, etc.Macaulay's peers have a larger role in his memoir than his parents and his two brothers. He writes about a time of life when your peer group has more influence than your family. It's a time of life when your choice of peers is restricted to your neighborhood – people who live within walking distance – and school classmates. They're not necessarily the friends you would choose if your choice was unlimited, but learning to get along and fit in with peers whose interests are different from yours serves to build your social skills.Readers in the author's age group will likely experience the strongest connection to this book, as well as readers in the UK, and particularly in Belfast. Readers whose interest is mainly in the history of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics may be disappointed. The Troubles are in the background of wee Tony's life, but they don't define his story. He didn't let it define him.This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

[camelama_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tony Macaulay’s memoir “Paperboy” was such an enjoyable read. I grew up with three brothers with paper routes, and I helped them (well, I tried to help, as Little Sister I was probably as much hindrance as help!) on many winter mornings. I was excited to win this book in the Early Reviewers, and wasn’t disappointed! Paperboy reads very well, I never felt bogged down in too much detail, it felt like Tony spent just enough time on each subject. He picked a variety of topics/memories, so the book never feels like a documentary about newspaper delivery. We learn a lot about that subject, but it’s always through his eyes, his emotions and childhood knowledge. Tony writes with a light touch, a wry self-deprecating humor, and an optimistic outlook on life. What were some fairly dark times for the country and people, is treated realistically – it wasn’t the most important thing in the young boy’s life. It stood out, but food and imagination and money (the newspaper route) and music were also just as important. And girls. I really enjoyed his descriptions of the people in his boyhood. Very colorful, but realistic. The newspaper man is unforgettable – his description brought back to me the memories of the smells of smokers’ cars from that era, and some adults I knew at the time who were similar. Another moment that still remains with me is Tony’s mother volunteering to help him out – just like my mother helped her sons when school or other duties interfered with their paper routes. Ah, a mother’s love! (And a sister’s – I had to go with sometimes, and oh the early morning memories I have from those years!) I loved this book, and am recommending it to many people, including my paperboy brothers and my papergirl mother.