It took me a long time to read this slim book of short stories because of how harrowing and brutal it is. Caldwell is a brilliant writer who completely inhabits and exhausts each point of view in her stories. The pattern emerges in her stories of an immediate introduction of crisis followed by a sense of acceptance. The last story, for example, focuses around two parents at a hospital who have been told their newborn has a 50% chance of surviving an unnamed condition. The mother goes deeply into a kind of shamanic ritual to call her baby's soul from its wanderings on a spirit plain to its body, to fight to live. It's grandiose, intense, spiritual, and primal. After the baby survives, all of this "magic" subsumes into the everyday routines of life, forever with a sense of needing to fortify against fate and existence itself: "The ferocity I felt through the nights in the hospital, the conviction that I could and would fight for his soul, has melted away in the daylight, and now it's just the three of us, left to watch and wait and muddle through. Wait for me, I say, terrified, and I heave the laundry sack over my shoulder. We have to stay together. We have to. That's all there is." This urgent grace describes the survivors of the worlds in this slim but huge collection of stories. I did think of Dubliners (in Belfast) as I read the book, spotting allusions and thinking of the focus on place in the collection. The writing itself is stunning. There is a raw simplicity that belies the ambiguities of the stories. I am very eager to read her other books now; on the basis of this book, she is now one of my favorite contemporary Irish writers. ( )

I find short stories are often less than satisfying, but in this collection Lucy Caldwell gets it spot on, knowing exactly how to pique your interest early and how to conclude each story well.

Most of the stories are based around the teenage years, and having gone to school in Belfast myself around 10 years before Caldwell I can absolutely vouch that she got that whole era spot on. I felt like I was transported back to my teenage self at times! There's something a little bizarre about reading about streets and parks and shops that you know very well, and I expect for that reason I got a hyper-real experience reading this collection compared to someone not from these parts.

Often I don't like reading books set in Belfast, as they tend to revolve around the Troubles and I've had enough of that nonsense to do me a lifetime, but this was a book that reflected the Belfast of my childhood. I might not have hung around the same streets as Caldwell, but I know the area well, and the slang that she uses made me chuckle as it took me right back to the late 1980s ("are you seeing him?"). Some of the slang is so Belfast-orientated I wonder if people not from here totally get it when they're reading the stories. ( )

There's little less satisfying than a short story that doesn't get it quite right. And it's a hard medium to master; every element that a novel allows chapters to communicate, must be evident in a handful of paragraphs. Fully rounded characters must spring from a half dozen lines and the theme and plot must be pared down until each sentence serves a specific purpose. But when a short story works, it's like a shot of whiskey or a kick in the head, everything is there, all at once.

Lucy Caldwell's book of short stories is a rare case of a collection in which each of the eleven stories works. Centered on the city of Belfast, the collection tells of ordinary people, usually children or teenagers, figuring out life. Often the protagonists feel like outsiders, or are dissatisfied in ways that can't always be communicated to their friends or family. Belfast, its weather, houses, roads and schools, is evocatively described. This is a lovely collection of stories, each of which stands ably on its own. I'll be looking for more by this author. ( )

“Before we are born, we decide in advance the lives we are going to live, the events in them, the people, the choices. We decide according to the lessons we want to learn, and all of us have already lived here many times over, learning new and different lessons, meeting over and over the same people in endlessly new configurations.”

What a fine book Lucy Caldwell's first short story collection is. Most of the collection's eleven stories take place in East Belfast in the 1980s and 1990s, where there are places "you never, ever go, not on purpose and not even by accident. One wrong turn, one wrong consonant; that’s all it takes.” She sensitively captures the sectarian violence, poverty, and bitter history of her setting. But there is much more to be found in this nuanced collection, which ventures into surprising and unexpected places.

Most of the stories feature young female characters, and are coming-of-age stories of varying sorts. We see her vulnerable girls struggling with their sexuality, how to belong, and the tribulations (and humiliations) of making your way in a hard and unforgiving world. There are moments of tender insight, and moments of dark hilarity. There is sly wit in abundance, and Caldwell has an uncanny touch for finding just the right zinger at the right moment that takes a story in a surprising direction. This can be disconcerting, but in a good way -- we're often kept off balance and forced to question our assumptions. Her insights are unsettling.

My favorite was "Poison," a wickedly creepy story of obsession gone very wrong involving a group of schoolgirls and their language teacher. Other high points for me were "Killing Time" (a comic -- yes -- take on suicide) and "Here We Are" (a tender and unconventional love story). The title story is also excellent.

It's an uneven collection, but consistently strong. And better yet, it's a collection with coherence. Like the best collections, the stories here work together to provide a whole that is even stronger than the sum of its parts.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Strongly recommended.

(Thank you to Faber & Faber for a complimentary copy in exchange for an unbiased review.) ( )

Caldwell achieves real emotional clarity in these eleven stories focusing on girls and women navigating the waters of social expectation, tumultuous relationships, and yearning for identity. "Thirteen" in particular has stuck with me - an all too familiar tale of friends growing apart at the dawn of adolescence. It's a testament to her intelligence of feeling and detail that these stories resonate with such rich depth, despite their fairly commonplace subject matter. As with all my favorite short story collections, I wanted to pause and sit with each offering before embarking on the next. ( )