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Multitudes: Stories
"Beautifully crafted, and so finely balanced that she holds the reader right up against the tender humanity of her characters." - Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
From Belfast to London and back again the eleven stories that comprise Caldwell's first collection explore the many facets of growing up - the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative - or "the drunkenness of things being various". Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.
From Belfast to London and back again the eleven stories that comprise Caldwell's first collection explore the many facets of growing up - the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative - or "the drunkenness of things being various". Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.
170 pages, Paperback
First published May 5, 2016
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August 15, 2017
The 11 stories in this collection were written over several years. What is surprising is that they form such a coherent series. Caldwell is a young (born 1981), Belfast-born writer. All of these stories are set in Belfast, specifically in East Belfast. East Belfast is staunchly Protestant, in this city which continues to be segregated by religion. Younger residents shun sectarianism, but housing patterns, bitter histories, and old habits don't change quickly. East Belfast gave us C.S. Lewis and Van Morrison (my absolutely favorite album of all time is Astral Weeks).
There are several stories that knocked me through a loop and will stay with me for a very long time. The first of these was Poison which Caldwell wrote for the 2014 collection Belfast Noir. A group of 15-year-old girls stalk their Spanish teacher, whose dark looks feed their teenage fantasies. One of the girls carries this obsession too far leading to a disastrous outcome. In the story Through the Wardrobe a bow to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, a six-year-old boy yearns for a Belle dress (as in Beauty and the Beast). As he becomes a victim of bullying and beatings, his parents look for help. The saddest line in the story, which is told in the first person by the now grown boy, is "The GP (family doctor) who will insist that there is no service anywhere in Northern Ireland that can help you". For me, the most poignant story was Here We Are . It is about two teenage girls from East Belfast, one the daughter of a fundamentalist Baptist widower, who fall in love. It included a beautiful and unforgettable description of walking the streets of the city. The final paragraph of the story for me is the second most memorable story closing only after the closing of James Joyce's story The Dead http://drmstream.com/2010/03/snow-was...
"That night, I walked the streets of East Belfast again in my dreams. Waking the dream seemed to linger far more than a mere dream. These streets are ours . I was jittery all day, a restless, nauseous, over-caffeinated feeling. I could email her, I thought, through the website. I wouldn't bother with pleasantries or preliminaries, I'd just say, 'There we were. Do you remember'? "
One of the members of my book group, a woman from Belfast, said this was her book of the year. This is a book for readers who love short stories, are interested in contemporary writing from Ireland and Northern Ireland, and especially for those who know and love the city of Belfast.
There are several stories that knocked me through a loop and will stay with me for a very long time. The first of these was Poison which Caldwell wrote for the 2014 collection Belfast Noir. A group of 15-year-old girls stalk their Spanish teacher, whose dark looks feed their teenage fantasies. One of the girls carries this obsession too far leading to a disastrous outcome. In the story Through the Wardrobe a bow to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, a six-year-old boy yearns for a Belle dress (as in Beauty and the Beast). As he becomes a victim of bullying and beatings, his parents look for help. The saddest line in the story, which is told in the first person by the now grown boy, is "The GP (family doctor) who will insist that there is no service anywhere in Northern Ireland that can help you". For me, the most poignant story was Here We Are . It is about two teenage girls from East Belfast, one the daughter of a fundamentalist Baptist widower, who fall in love. It included a beautiful and unforgettable description of walking the streets of the city. The final paragraph of the story for me is the second most memorable story closing only after the closing of James Joyce's story The Dead http://drmstream.com/2010/03/snow-was...
"That night, I walked the streets of East Belfast again in my dreams. Waking the dream seemed to linger far more than a mere dream. These streets are ours . I was jittery all day, a restless, nauseous, over-caffeinated feeling. I could email her, I thought, through the website. I wouldn't bother with pleasantries or preliminaries, I'd just say, 'There we were. Do you remember'? "
One of the members of my book group, a woman from Belfast, said this was her book of the year. This is a book for readers who love short stories, are interested in contemporary writing from Ireland and Northern Ireland, and especially for those who know and love the city of Belfast.
July 2, 2022
Another book picked up on a whim from the library - this is a very accomplished short story collection. Most of the stories are set in and around Belfast, and most involve rites of passage elements, and the whole thing works rather well.
August 14, 2019
I have wanted to read Lucy Caldwell's work for such a long time, and decided to start with her short story collection entitled Multitudes. It has been praised by reviewers and critics alike since its publication in 2016. Eimear McBride comments that these tales are 'beautifully crafted, and so finely balanced that she holds the reader right up against the tender humanity of her characters.' The Scotsman remarks that the collection 'feels like a truly unified work of art.' Caldwell has won numerous awards, and was also shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award in 2012.
The eleven stories in Multitudes largely take as their focus childhood and adolescence, and each one contains the concept of growth, rendered in different and interesting ways. The lives which Caldwell captures here are described in the book's blurb as 'caught in transition between the in-crowd and the out, between love and loneliness, between the city and the country, between home and escape.'
I was immediately struck by the way in which Caldwell captures things. In the story 'Thirteen', she writes: 'Susan and I have been best friends since nursery school - since before nursery school, we always say to each other, in actual fact since Mothers and Toddlers in the hall of the Methodist church on the corner where her street meets mine. I don't remember that far back, only vaguely - plastic cups of orange squash and dusty, frilled-edge biscuits, the smell of floor polish - but I can't remember, let alone imagine, life without her.'
Caldwell has such a realistic perception of how spiteful adolescents can be, and how elements of our childhood become inescapable in adulthood. The concerns of her characters, and their actions and reactions, are so human. In 'Poison', the narrator sees, years later, a teacher who caused a scandal at her school; 'Killing Time' presents a sudden impulsive suicide attempt; the narrator of 'Chasing' moves back to their childhood home, and finds very early on that this course of action is 'not the answer'; and a lesbian relationship is hidden from everyone around the protagonist of 'Here We Are'. There is much exploration in Multitudes of female friendships, and the small toxicities which they so often hold. Love, lust, deception, desire, and guilt have all been chosen as major themes in Multitudes.
Caldwell perfectly controls the vividly rendered physical environments of her stories, and often juxtaposes out-of-place characters into them. In 'Poison', for example, she writes: 'She had too much make-up on: huge swipes of blusher, exaggerated cat-eyes. She glanced around the bar, then she took out her phone again, clicked and tapped at it. She wasn't used to being alone in a bar like this. It was an older crowd and she felt self-conscious, you could tell.'
Caldwell creates such empathy for her wholly memorable cast of characters, and deals with a host of very serious subjects along the way. The author has such a knack for writing plausible characters, and I found myself repeatedly unable to guess where the stories would end up. Multitudes is such an absorbing collection of short stories, and one which I savoured. I found myself pulled into each one of the narratives from their very beginnings. Thought-provoking and refreshing, this is a collection which I cannot recommend highly enough, and I am now on the hunt for the rest of Caldwell's books so that I can become absorbed within her writing once more.
The eleven stories in Multitudes largely take as their focus childhood and adolescence, and each one contains the concept of growth, rendered in different and interesting ways. The lives which Caldwell captures here are described in the book's blurb as 'caught in transition between the in-crowd and the out, between love and loneliness, between the city and the country, between home and escape.'
I was immediately struck by the way in which Caldwell captures things. In the story 'Thirteen', she writes: 'Susan and I have been best friends since nursery school - since before nursery school, we always say to each other, in actual fact since Mothers and Toddlers in the hall of the Methodist church on the corner where her street meets mine. I don't remember that far back, only vaguely - plastic cups of orange squash and dusty, frilled-edge biscuits, the smell of floor polish - but I can't remember, let alone imagine, life without her.'
Caldwell has such a realistic perception of how spiteful adolescents can be, and how elements of our childhood become inescapable in adulthood. The concerns of her characters, and their actions and reactions, are so human. In 'Poison', the narrator sees, years later, a teacher who caused a scandal at her school; 'Killing Time' presents a sudden impulsive suicide attempt; the narrator of 'Chasing' moves back to their childhood home, and finds very early on that this course of action is 'not the answer'; and a lesbian relationship is hidden from everyone around the protagonist of 'Here We Are'. There is much exploration in Multitudes of female friendships, and the small toxicities which they so often hold. Love, lust, deception, desire, and guilt have all been chosen as major themes in Multitudes.
Caldwell perfectly controls the vividly rendered physical environments of her stories, and often juxtaposes out-of-place characters into them. In 'Poison', for example, she writes: 'She had too much make-up on: huge swipes of blusher, exaggerated cat-eyes. She glanced around the bar, then she took out her phone again, clicked and tapped at it. She wasn't used to being alone in a bar like this. It was an older crowd and she felt self-conscious, you could tell.'
Caldwell creates such empathy for her wholly memorable cast of characters, and deals with a host of very serious subjects along the way. The author has such a knack for writing plausible characters, and I found myself repeatedly unable to guess where the stories would end up. Multitudes is such an absorbing collection of short stories, and one which I savoured. I found myself pulled into each one of the narratives from their very beginnings. Thought-provoking and refreshing, this is a collection which I cannot recommend highly enough, and I am now on the hunt for the rest of Caldwell's books so that I can become absorbed within her writing once more.
July 1, 2016
What a short story collection! Lucy Caldwell has a way with words - the beautifully written stories evoke with each one the exact emotion I imagine she is trying to get from the reader: the awkwardness; the excitement; the guilt; the fear. Reading this collection, was for me, like eating a packet of chocolate biscuits, you devour one, but then convince your self that you'll have just one more, and then suddenly when you look up you've devoured the whole lot. You may have the slight guilt afterwards for having consumed them all in one go and not savoured each one more slowly.
July 7, 2023
Yakınlıklar’ı çok sevdiğimden yazarın ilk öykü derlemesini de listemde öne aldım ve sonuçtan da gayet memnunum. Aşk, yalnızlık, büyümek, kabullenmek, yalnızlık vs. gibi temaları olan on bir hikayeden oluşan bu derlemede daha iyi olan ya da daha az iyi olan öyküler var ama hiç sevmediğim bir öykü olmadı doğrusu.
Lucy Caldwell büyük hikayelerin peşinde koşan bir yazar değil. Aksine gündelik hayatı, gündelik hayatı derinden etkileyen dramatik olayları yer yer rahatsız edici bir sükunetle anlatmayı seviyor. Yıllar sonra karşılaşılan bir arkadaşın eşinin ve oğlunun trafik kazasında ölmesi ya da bir karakterin annesinin intihar etmiş olması öylece bir cümle içerisinde geçiveriyor ama etkisi okuyucuyla baş başa kalıyor. Yazarın odağı daima karakterlerinde ve onların ne hissettiklerinde. Geçmiş ya da gelecek değil sadece şimdiye odaklılar. Bu yüzden de bazen çocuk bazen ergen bazen de ebeveyn olmanın tüm kaygılarını iliklerine kadar hissediyorlar. Her şey öylesine gerçek ve dokunaklı ki okuyucunun da kayıtsız kalması mümkün olmuyor. Yakınlıklar’ın bir tık altında ama genel olarak gayet başarılı.
Lucy Caldwell büyük hikayelerin peşinde koşan bir yazar değil. Aksine gündelik hayatı, gündelik hayatı derinden etkileyen dramatik olayları yer yer rahatsız edici bir sükunetle anlatmayı seviyor. Yıllar sonra karşılaşılan bir arkadaşın eşinin ve oğlunun trafik kazasında ölmesi ya da bir karakterin annesinin intihar etmiş olması öylece bir cümle içerisinde geçiveriyor ama etkisi okuyucuyla baş başa kalıyor. Yazarın odağı daima karakterlerinde ve onların ne hissettiklerinde. Geçmiş ya da gelecek değil sadece şimdiye odaklılar. Bu yüzden de bazen çocuk bazen ergen bazen de ebeveyn olmanın tüm kaygılarını iliklerine kadar hissediyorlar. Her şey öylesine gerçek ve dokunaklı ki okuyucunun da kayıtsız kalması mümkün olmuyor. Yakınlıklar’ın bir tık altında ama genel olarak gayet başarılı.
September 22, 2018
Faves: Multitudes, Killing Time, Poison.
January 14, 2021
Not often do I come across a book whose title actually perfectly embodies what it is hiding inside. Multitudes, however, is such a book. Having read Lucy Caldwell's Mayday and Here We Are before, I was already similar to some extent with how Caldwell masterfully creates a story that each time is unlike what she's written before. Each story in Multitudes forms its own entity; its own voices; its own desires. Yet once put together, these slices of life accumulate to various levels of the same feelings of nostalgia and melancholia. And even though my ratings for these eleven stories are as numerous as the stories themselves, the five-star ones compensate for all of it. While Through The Wardrobe, Here We Are, Ally Ally O, and Killing Time flung me back to a time filled with teenage angst, annoyance, giggles, and lies, specifically Poison and Thirteen struck me the most because of how they demonstrated the lengths pre-teens (myself included) were willing to go for the approval and even admiration of their peers.
Oh how we thought we were already adults, when our lives had only just begun.
Oh how we thought we were already adults, when our lives had only just begun.
May 30, 2020
"I didnt' know until we got here that this was where we were going"
unfinished
August 27, 2019I read the first two stories (37 pages), “The Ally Ally O” and “Thirteen.” I enjoyed the short opener, which describes a desultory ride in the car with mother and sisters with second-person narration and no speech marks. I should have given up on “Thirteen,” though, a tired story of a young teen missing her best friend, who moved from Northern Ireland to London. She tries drinking, boys and parties, but her heart’s not really in it. I couldn’t face any more stories of troubled adolescence (so far from my own experience as to be alien). I’d enjoyed two of Caldwell’s novels and will try her work again.
July 6, 2024
3.5 stars. Caldwell certainly captures the vulnerability and uncertainties of youth; friendships, families and relationships. While the stories all revolve around young people, predominantly in their early teens, it is the multiple perspectives and flashbacks that create varied experiences in these stories. They are often quite simple and familiar experiences making them quite relatable. The storytelling is straightforward and overall they are a satisfying collection of stories.
January 27, 2020
3.5 stars
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January 27, 2022
Nice collection of short stories all to different degrees in orbit around themes of loneliness, loss, hope and love, almost always with the city of Belfast as the backdrop (somtimes more of a 'foredrop'). LGBT themes also appear in a sizeable part of the stories, and, although I still have a lot to learn from the community, it does seem like those stories approach their subject matters thoughtfully and respectfully. Overall: a nice and accessible short read, also for those with less experience with reading and literature, I think. My personal favourite stories are Thirteen (for its depiction of utter loneliness and how hope flickers in the face of it), Through the Wardrobe (for its lived, intimate view into the life of someone who feels differently than they're born) and Here We Are (for its heart-fluttering depiction of giddy, devoted love and how it can persist in unexpected ways).
September 9, 2023
I’ve been requested by friends to start reviewing! I really enjoyed this- I read it in one sitting (ok, I was on a flight). Nothing mind blowing about it but I like this author and I loved recognising the street names. Will read more of her work.
February 8, 2023
First collection of stories - the follow up Intimacies is excellent - and very good. Deals mainly with growing up - school/Uni - and problems such as coming out, bullying friends, drugs etc. Set in Belfast in 90s. Caldwell is a sensitive and accomplished practitioner.
April 29, 2018
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.
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.
October 1, 2016
Another great book of the month from the Irish Times. This collection focuses primarily on young women in contemporary Belfast, all with varying degrees of difficulty that are immediately recognizable, situations that are as prevalent globally thanks to the presence of the Internet. The Good Son presented life in Belfast as experienced possibly by the previous generation, during the Troubles. These young people are facing life challenges without the overt violence in the streets of that earlier time. There is some beautiful writing here too, and each story is strong, memorable.
February 4, 2018
After reading Eimear McBride and now Lucy Caldwell's collection of interwoven short stories Multitudes, I feel quite affirmed in my belief that there is something in the water Irish women writers drink that enables them to capture the thrum and buzz of adolescence with such clarity.
August 20, 2017
I enjoyed this short story collection, which I had actually bought at its launch but hadn't read until now, without being blown away by it. Caldwell, as far as I know, doesn't live in Belfast anymore, and a few of the stories were so chock full of references, both physical and cultural, that it began to feel that she was trying too hard to show her local 'cred'. Just a personal gripe. Saying that, these were seven issue driven stories which represented a very different side to the city than one often reads about in local fiction.
March 26, 2022
Floods of good story collections (like this one) being published, yet only droplets of really outstanding, sublime ones
February 7, 2022
There is some beautiful writing in this book and some exquisite stories. Lines such as ‘even if there’s no real metric to grief, there is, must be, a hierarchy of loss.’
My reluctance to give five stars is because I found the protagonists in each of the stories ( and the demographic) very similar so sometimes they seemed to run into each other.
My reluctance to give five stars is because I found the protagonists in each of the stories ( and the demographic) very similar so sometimes they seemed to run into each other.
June 6, 2022
the first story is disappointing, but then the collection keeps on getting and better. by the end of the book you don't want it to end. ever!
December 10, 2023
Lucy Caldwell won the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award for her story
All the People Were Mean and Bad
, in which the mother of a young child takes a transatlantic flight after the death of a relative. The 11 stories included in this volume, which were written and published over several years, document her ways with words in approaching human relationships and the complexities of life. Most of the stories take place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a few others in London.
Caldwell’s short stories explore various themes, ranging from difficulties of growing up, exploration of sexuality, regrets and loneliness, migration, and parenthood. She likes to explore the situations in which her characters are in limbo, being in-between of something, such as waiting to board a flight at the airport, or simply waiting discreetly as her protagonist is stalking someone else in the story. In her stories, she also frequently utilises the second-person point of view, maintaining the word “you” in addressing the readers, involving them as part of the stories.
If I have to rank between the 11 stories included in this volume, my favourite goes to Cyprus Avenue, which happens to open with the sentence: “December has always been hard, but this year will be the hardest December yet. You will feel yourself struggling to shoulder the weight of it, will want, more keenly than ever, to shrug it off, just this once, just for one year … ”. It resonated deeply as I happened to read it also in December, and December seems to always be the hardest month of the year, as everything concludes. It’s as though every single thing that failed to take place between January and November seems to beg for a conclusion in December. But what I like about the story, it eventually gives an alternative point of view about December (and Christmas, in particular), that even in the tiny window offered by December, there are still slight chances for something good to happen that will overshadow what happened between January and November, such as the protagonist’s chance encounter with an Indian migrant called Nirupam Choudhury during the delay of their flight from London to Belfast, which brings into their mind alternative scenarios for that year’s Christmas.
Another story that I find interesting is Here We Are, in which the protagonist recalls her student days with Angie Beattie, the story of what has happened between them, and what should have happened. She simply recalls their shared memories and love story as: “There are times in your life, or maybe just the one time, when you find yourself in the right place, the only place you could possibly be, and with the only person.” It is only halfway after the self-confession on the protagonist’s crush towards Angie Beattie that the protagonist is revealed to be a woman, which immediately adds depth to the plot, as their love eventually could not find an outlet in their conservative environment despite their mutual attraction.
Even though it’s not explicit, some of Caldwell’s stories actually hint at the difficulties and confusion that her characters have to face in confronting the question of sexuality, most apparent in the story Through the Wardrobe, in which the main character hints at wanting to cross-dress by trying the belle dress owned by his sister. Overall, I find Caldwell’s short stories compelling, exploring the complexities and deep layers of human experience, through diverse themes and perspectives.
Caldwell’s short stories explore various themes, ranging from difficulties of growing up, exploration of sexuality, regrets and loneliness, migration, and parenthood. She likes to explore the situations in which her characters are in limbo, being in-between of something, such as waiting to board a flight at the airport, or simply waiting discreetly as her protagonist is stalking someone else in the story. In her stories, she also frequently utilises the second-person point of view, maintaining the word “you” in addressing the readers, involving them as part of the stories.
If I have to rank between the 11 stories included in this volume, my favourite goes to Cyprus Avenue, which happens to open with the sentence: “December has always been hard, but this year will be the hardest December yet. You will feel yourself struggling to shoulder the weight of it, will want, more keenly than ever, to shrug it off, just this once, just for one year … ”. It resonated deeply as I happened to read it also in December, and December seems to always be the hardest month of the year, as everything concludes. It’s as though every single thing that failed to take place between January and November seems to beg for a conclusion in December. But what I like about the story, it eventually gives an alternative point of view about December (and Christmas, in particular), that even in the tiny window offered by December, there are still slight chances for something good to happen that will overshadow what happened between January and November, such as the protagonist’s chance encounter with an Indian migrant called Nirupam Choudhury during the delay of their flight from London to Belfast, which brings into their mind alternative scenarios for that year’s Christmas.
Another story that I find interesting is Here We Are, in which the protagonist recalls her student days with Angie Beattie, the story of what has happened between them, and what should have happened. She simply recalls their shared memories and love story as: “There are times in your life, or maybe just the one time, when you find yourself in the right place, the only place you could possibly be, and with the only person.” It is only halfway after the self-confession on the protagonist’s crush towards Angie Beattie that the protagonist is revealed to be a woman, which immediately adds depth to the plot, as their love eventually could not find an outlet in their conservative environment despite their mutual attraction.
Even though it’s not explicit, some of Caldwell’s stories actually hint at the difficulties and confusion that her characters have to face in confronting the question of sexuality, most apparent in the story Through the Wardrobe, in which the main character hints at wanting to cross-dress by trying the belle dress owned by his sister. Overall, I find Caldwell’s short stories compelling, exploring the complexities and deep layers of human experience, through diverse themes and perspectives.
July 21, 2024
Aptly titled MULTITUDES, Lucy Caldwell creates a beautiful collection where the journey from girlhood to womanhood is seen through the prism of searching and longing.
There’s a certain guilt that haunts the narrator in the third story POISON, why else would she offer to pay for the bill of the one who had supposedly preyed on young girls? But that’s the thing, it was never her intention to get him caught. She wanted to experience it herself, it was her dream to be one of Mr. Knoxx’s girls. The allure of the exotic—her attraction to Mr Knox was for many reasons, his fashion, and his posters, but mainly it was what he spoke—Spanish. But she always felt a distance between him and her. She, and they all, but mainly she, was preoccupied with the ideas of Davina, how she would be this movie siren, a young Catherine Deneuve on his walls, but when she stalked their house and finally saw her, she was just… normal. This shot her confidence to another level. The idea that it didn't take someone extraordinary to get picked up by Mr. Knoxx. If Davina could, then she could too. And by touching every part of him– his house, his bathroom, his baby, his condom, she had practically touched him as well; the only thing left was to cross that final barrier. The entire thing is told from her POV, so Mr. Knoxx’s real intentions always remain clouded. But there’s more than enough proof, or at least doubt, that it wasn’t a one-off. The title is a beautiful wordplay, she wanted to be a perfume for Mr. Knoxx to smell and feel and touch, even if it might be a poison. This is a story about the dangers of naivety, for stupid children, it could be a risky but fun game of roleplay, for the other side, it could be just another chapter.
The girls in all her stories are in a constant state of liminality, stuck in the physical realm of Belfast, but wishing to escape someplace far. Sometimes, their reasons to disappear make sense. Like the one in THIRTEEN, bullied and ostracized by the entire town, maybe because she was a lesbian, maybe because she hung out with minorities, maybe because she was there at that time. So, for her, closing her eyes, and dreaming of sleepovers with Susan Clarke makes sense. But for the one in KILLING TIME, there’s no reason why the girl decides to take her life by overdosing on paracetamols.
Maybe that’s what Lucy’s trying to say. That people don’t need reasons to want to escape. It is as much a universal and an innate need, as is wanting to be home, staying.
But she’s not just interested in wondering about the escape. She wants to explore the aftermath too. How it affects people, and oneself. The girls get to ruminate over their own decisions, like in KILLING TIME, where her whole wordview about her cat changes. And how her cat’s death, increases the value of her own life in her eyes, by tenfold. Similarly, in ESCAPE ROUTES, it’s the disappearance of the loved one, but we follow the story of the one who’s left behind. That’s what Lucy’s mainly interested in. How are people affected by this unending desire for their escapism? That’s how the riveting and heartbreaking story of “Thirteen” is framed. Starting with the farewell of her childhood best friend, the titular thirteen-year-old girl is now left on her own, left behind.
The way the protagonists in each of the first three stories wished to be someplace else, escapism might be the central theme in this work. And so, she tackles the subject head-on in ESCAPE ROUTES, the story about a girl pining for her babysitter and their video game sessions where they talked about disappearing into wormholes. Their musings were focused more on the “cheatcodes”, the keywords through which you can enter a deeper level and unlock places that are unknown to us. She learned later, when it was too late, that those were the signs. It was never just a game. Life is not a game.
On the third page of THROUGH THE WARDROBE, I balked. Because up till now, every single narrator was a girl. And this one too, started with the narrator dreaming of a Belle dress, how wearing it would solve everything in their life. Learning that it’s a boy sent a shock to my spine. It was instantly apparent, at that moment, that this was a story about the trans experience. And if you think about it, what suits the theme of escaping better than one who feels like they’re stuck in their own body? Wanting to escape the world, the town makes sense. Wanting to escape oneself, must be exponentially painful.
HERE WE ARE is my favorite story in the collection, and the reason is simple: while all the others have this dreadful feeling of inevitability right from the beginning, it is already too late to save these people, —like we know Susan Clarke is leaving her best friend, we know she’s going to poison herself, we know something happened with this old man and the narrator in the past when they were younger, we know the babysitter-cum-crush Christopher disappears around the midpoint, but only at the very end, do we learn that yes, it was a wish all along, it was indeed too much to ask for. That’s why it is more crushing, because we saw their whole world being built in front of us, the long time before they first met, just their eyes, then actually talked, the dinner at home, the kiss in school. We saw a flower growing from nothing. And then, it is stolen away. The title, too, joins in this deception strategy, Here We Are in the present tense as if it’s the only and final truth of their story.
If CHASING mulls over the inexplicable sadness of the realization that returning might not be the answer, then INEXTINGUISHABLE stamps it with the assurance that we’ll learn to leave, despite absences.
CYPRUS AVENUE places Belfast on the map, as a city that no one really wants to visit, but still does, until we find out why people choose to run away.
The final story, MULTITUDES, is written uniquely, differentiating itself from the rest of the work. But it feels like a culmination of everything else up till this point. A mother’s love is powerful enough to birth life and then bring it back from the dead.
After reading this lovely piece of literature, I want to go to Belfast and see for myself what getting lost feels like.
There’s a certain guilt that haunts the narrator in the third story POISON, why else would she offer to pay for the bill of the one who had supposedly preyed on young girls? But that’s the thing, it was never her intention to get him caught. She wanted to experience it herself, it was her dream to be one of Mr. Knoxx’s girls. The allure of the exotic—her attraction to Mr Knox was for many reasons, his fashion, and his posters, but mainly it was what he spoke—Spanish. But she always felt a distance between him and her. She, and they all, but mainly she, was preoccupied with the ideas of Davina, how she would be this movie siren, a young Catherine Deneuve on his walls, but when she stalked their house and finally saw her, she was just… normal. This shot her confidence to another level. The idea that it didn't take someone extraordinary to get picked up by Mr. Knoxx. If Davina could, then she could too. And by touching every part of him– his house, his bathroom, his baby, his condom, she had practically touched him as well; the only thing left was to cross that final barrier. The entire thing is told from her POV, so Mr. Knoxx’s real intentions always remain clouded. But there’s more than enough proof, or at least doubt, that it wasn’t a one-off. The title is a beautiful wordplay, she wanted to be a perfume for Mr. Knoxx to smell and feel and touch, even if it might be a poison. This is a story about the dangers of naivety, for stupid children, it could be a risky but fun game of roleplay, for the other side, it could be just another chapter.
The girls in all her stories are in a constant state of liminality, stuck in the physical realm of Belfast, but wishing to escape someplace far. Sometimes, their reasons to disappear make sense. Like the one in THIRTEEN, bullied and ostracized by the entire town, maybe because she was a lesbian, maybe because she hung out with minorities, maybe because she was there at that time. So, for her, closing her eyes, and dreaming of sleepovers with Susan Clarke makes sense. But for the one in KILLING TIME, there’s no reason why the girl decides to take her life by overdosing on paracetamols.
Maybe that’s what Lucy’s trying to say. That people don’t need reasons to want to escape. It is as much a universal and an innate need, as is wanting to be home, staying.
But she’s not just interested in wondering about the escape. She wants to explore the aftermath too. How it affects people, and oneself. The girls get to ruminate over their own decisions, like in KILLING TIME, where her whole wordview about her cat changes. And how her cat’s death, increases the value of her own life in her eyes, by tenfold. Similarly, in ESCAPE ROUTES, it’s the disappearance of the loved one, but we follow the story of the one who’s left behind. That’s what Lucy’s mainly interested in. How are people affected by this unending desire for their escapism? That’s how the riveting and heartbreaking story of “Thirteen” is framed. Starting with the farewell of her childhood best friend, the titular thirteen-year-old girl is now left on her own, left behind.
The way the protagonists in each of the first three stories wished to be someplace else, escapism might be the central theme in this work. And so, she tackles the subject head-on in ESCAPE ROUTES, the story about a girl pining for her babysitter and their video game sessions where they talked about disappearing into wormholes. Their musings were focused more on the “cheatcodes”, the keywords through which you can enter a deeper level and unlock places that are unknown to us. She learned later, when it was too late, that those were the signs. It was never just a game. Life is not a game.
On the third page of THROUGH THE WARDROBE, I balked. Because up till now, every single narrator was a girl. And this one too, started with the narrator dreaming of a Belle dress, how wearing it would solve everything in their life. Learning that it’s a boy sent a shock to my spine. It was instantly apparent, at that moment, that this was a story about the trans experience. And if you think about it, what suits the theme of escaping better than one who feels like they’re stuck in their own body? Wanting to escape the world, the town makes sense. Wanting to escape oneself, must be exponentially painful.
HERE WE ARE is my favorite story in the collection, and the reason is simple: while all the others have this dreadful feeling of inevitability right from the beginning, it is already too late to save these people, —like we know Susan Clarke is leaving her best friend, we know she’s going to poison herself, we know something happened with this old man and the narrator in the past when they were younger, we know the babysitter-cum-crush Christopher disappears around the midpoint, but only at the very end, do we learn that yes, it was a wish all along, it was indeed too much to ask for. That’s why it is more crushing, because we saw their whole world being built in front of us, the long time before they first met, just their eyes, then actually talked, the dinner at home, the kiss in school. We saw a flower growing from nothing. And then, it is stolen away. The title, too, joins in this deception strategy, Here We Are in the present tense as if it’s the only and final truth of their story.
If CHASING mulls over the inexplicable sadness of the realization that returning might not be the answer, then INEXTINGUISHABLE stamps it with the assurance that we’ll learn to leave, despite absences.
CYPRUS AVENUE places Belfast on the map, as a city that no one really wants to visit, but still does, until we find out why people choose to run away.
The final story, MULTITUDES, is written uniquely, differentiating itself from the rest of the work. But it feels like a culmination of everything else up till this point. A mother’s love is powerful enough to birth life and then bring it back from the dead.
After reading this lovely piece of literature, I want to go to Belfast and see for myself what getting lost feels like.
October 4, 2023
I have read a few works by Lucy Caldwell now, and came to this selection of short stories after reading her long form novel These Days
I heard Lucy Caldwell with Thomas Morris at Faber, Hatton Garden 18.9.23
• Short stories are designed to conjure an atmosphere. Not plot based.
• Sarah Hall structures her collections like a relay race. So the first and last are the strongest.
• Short stories more intense. Have to read in a single sitting, so not necessarily ideal for a short commute.
• Caldwell’s next release will also be a short story collection: Openings in May 2024. A London Blitz short story of daylight raids was written before These Days featuring the Belfast Blitz.
I found these eleven short stories a bit disappointing. My overall impression is that it was not a good time to be a young, impressionable teenage girl in Belfast early in the twenty first century. Sexual discovery is a tightrope walk in which to fall off the wire is to lead to potential disaster. The collective feral unkindness of school year peer group, drugs, depression, and killer joyriders.
There’s some redemption as the collection reaches its end as first Cyprus Avenue , featuring new and uncomplicated friendship is an uplifting story, and finally the title story, Multitudes is filled with unconditional love as a new born child carries the wisdom of ages. As the narrator says: “You’re here to teach me too “
The collection as a whole has redeeming qualities, but its not the best of Lucy Caldwell’s work in my opinion.
I heard Lucy Caldwell with Thomas Morris at Faber, Hatton Garden 18.9.23
• Short stories are designed to conjure an atmosphere. Not plot based.
• Sarah Hall structures her collections like a relay race. So the first and last are the strongest.
• Short stories more intense. Have to read in a single sitting, so not necessarily ideal for a short commute.
• Caldwell’s next release will also be a short story collection: Openings in May 2024. A London Blitz short story of daylight raids was written before These Days featuring the Belfast Blitz.
I found these eleven short stories a bit disappointing. My overall impression is that it was not a good time to be a young, impressionable teenage girl in Belfast early in the twenty first century. Sexual discovery is a tightrope walk in which to fall off the wire is to lead to potential disaster. The collective feral unkindness of school year peer group, drugs, depression, and killer joyriders.
There’s some redemption as the collection reaches its end as first Cyprus Avenue , featuring new and uncomplicated friendship is an uplifting story, and finally the title story, Multitudes is filled with unconditional love as a new born child carries the wisdom of ages. As the narrator says: “You’re here to teach me too “
The collection as a whole has redeeming qualities, but its not the best of Lucy Caldwell’s work in my opinion.
September 14, 2021
“other things we know about him. his smell and the particular warm heft of him, the feeling of his rapid hot little breaths against our chests or into our necks and his shuddering exhales, and the way his arms fling up above his shoulders in abandon when he sleeps and his drawn-up, groggy little legs. these are the things every parent knows, but they are also specific to him, to us, as if we are the first in the world ever to know them. other things. he has, somehow, at just a week and a half and against all the odds, begun to smile. we know the doctors will say this is impossible, say it is wind, or involuntary movement of the muscles, and so we document it furiously, tapping series of pictures into our phones, taking videos, before we look at each other and put down our phones and just smile back at him, eyes thick with tears. yes, we say, that’s right. yes. other things. we loved him as soon as he was born, bashed up and purple and battle-scarred, and we loved him fiercely and surprisingly, and what we said to him and to each other was, it’s you, because it was him, and it had been all along, and it made such sense, that heady overwhelming flush of recognition.”
“a sudden flash comes to you of the belle dress, from all those years ago, and you realize it’s the memory you’ve been reaching for, the thing that hovers at the edge of your dreams, and everything, all at once, makes a terrifying, intoxicating sort of sense.”
“other times, of course, i’d swap every single note of music ever written for one last chance to see her, just five minutes, just one hug. i don’t believe in an afterlife, as such, the way the priests describe. fluffy clouds and harps and your loved ones in eternal spring. but i don’t think that we end, either, ever. no matter what life does to you and even after life as we know it is over, i think that something remains that cannot be destroyed or put out. so there we have it, for want of a better word: inextinguishable.”
beautiful !!! not even mentioning the absolute masterpiece that ‘here we are’ is !!! an amazing collection of very special stories ! lucy caldwell !!!!!
February 26, 2022
An easy five stars. I’ve never related to a collection more, and I’m so excited to read Lucy Caldwell’s upcoming novel - ‘These Days’.
My favourite stories were ‘Thirteen’, ‘Killing Time’ and ‘Here We Are’.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My favourite stories were ‘Thirteen’, ‘Killing Time’ and ‘Here We Are’.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 6, 2023
All the stars!
January 2, 2020
Ah, what a great trip! Through its pages this refreshing short story collection transported – or rather teleported – me to Northern Ireland. My favourite short story in this collection was the phenomenal title story ‘Multitudes’ 😍
November 30, 2016
Multitudes is a rather superior story collection set mostly in East Belfast.
For those who don’t know it, Northern Ireland is a rather conservative place with a high degree of social compliance. It tends not to deal well with diversity. Just to exemplify this, it is a place where the weekend TV continuity announcer in the 1990s, Julian Simmonds, was an unmarried man in late middle age, with bleached blond hair, a range of pastel coloured jackets, a camp accent and a day job working for an airline. And people were shocked when it was revealed that he was gay.
So this is the society that Lucy Caldwell puts under the microscope. She breaks every taboo. We have race (and mixed race at that), loneliness, emigration, death, homosexuality, transsexualism, and mental illness. Other reviewers have spotted that the lead characters in each story are progressively older, going from early years through to end of life. It’s subtle, but I’m afraid I missed it.
What I did get, though, was the enormous depth of compassion in each story. The lead characters really come alive, flourishing briefly but brightly in vivid colours. There is an insight into the soul of a community that does its best to hide it. The language is clear, there is no hint of the ambiguous endings that can make some short story collections feel like a slog. And nor does the reader get any sense of ennui from a parade of similar stories. Whilst the stories may collectively address diversity, they are each diverse enough in themselves to stand up individually.
Highly recommended.
For those who don’t know it, Northern Ireland is a rather conservative place with a high degree of social compliance. It tends not to deal well with diversity. Just to exemplify this, it is a place where the weekend TV continuity announcer in the 1990s, Julian Simmonds, was an unmarried man in late middle age, with bleached blond hair, a range of pastel coloured jackets, a camp accent and a day job working for an airline. And people were shocked when it was revealed that he was gay.
So this is the society that Lucy Caldwell puts under the microscope. She breaks every taboo. We have race (and mixed race at that), loneliness, emigration, death, homosexuality, transsexualism, and mental illness. Other reviewers have spotted that the lead characters in each story are progressively older, going from early years through to end of life. It’s subtle, but I’m afraid I missed it.
What I did get, though, was the enormous depth of compassion in each story. The lead characters really come alive, flourishing briefly but brightly in vivid colours. There is an insight into the soul of a community that does its best to hide it. The language is clear, there is no hint of the ambiguous endings that can make some short story collections feel like a slog. And nor does the reader get any sense of ennui from a parade of similar stories. Whilst the stories may collectively address diversity, they are each diverse enough in themselves to stand up individually.
Highly recommended.
June 22, 2016
One of the things I love about the anthology “The Long Gaze Back” (which I read at the end of last year) is how it has tipped me off to so many great writers! I first read Lisa McInerney’s writing here before she won the Baileys Prize this year and I also read Lucy Caldwell’s short story ‘Multitudes’ in this anthology. I was immediately struck by the intense energy and emotion of this tale about the perilous days immediately following a birth when a newborn’s life is in danger because of an unexpected illness. This story has an amazing way of viewing this difficult time period in a broader context through titled segments while also conveying the heartrending fear the new parents felt moment by moment. It suggests the thin, perilous lines between one kind of fate and another in life. ‘Multitudes’ has now become the title story in Lucy Caldwell’s most recent book of short stories. I was delighted to find that the author’s other new fiction in this book expresses an equally exciting rigour and creativity.
Read my full review of Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell on LonesomeReader
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