Fiction. HEART OF THE OLD COUNTRY is an exciting and darkly humorous novel that takes a guided tour of the ethnic enclaves of South Brooklyn. Not the Brooklyn of Spike Lee or Matty Rich, but a counterpoint, where the hangers-on, those left behind in the white flight to the suburbs, continue to do business while defending their shrinking borders. Echoing Price's The The Wanderers and Selby's Last Exit, an honest, unromantic look at Brooklyn's underclass. No voice in this symphony of a novel is more impressive than that of Mr. McLoughlin, a young writer with a rare gift for realism and empathy -- Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son.