Cal: A Novel - Softcover

MacLaverty, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393313328 ISBN 13: 9780393313321

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

"Bernard MacLaverty's powerful novel is a love story as affecting and tragic as you could want."―USA Today

When it was first published, Bernard MacLaverty's fiction masterpiece was hailed by Michael Gorra in the New York Times Book Review as "a marvel of technical perfection. . . . Cal is a most moving novel whose emotional impact is grounded in a complete avoidance of sentimentality. . . . [It] will become the Passage to India of the Troubles."

For Cal, a Belfast teenager who, against his will, is involved in the terrible war between Catholics and Protestants, some of the choices are devastatingly simple: he can work in the slaughterhouse that nauseates him or join the dole queue; he can brood on his past or plan a future with the beautiful, widowed Marcella for whose grief he shares more than a little responsibility.

About this title

Review

First published in 1983, this lyrical novel, superficially straightforward but full of stories within stories, first brought Bernard MacLaverty's work to public attention. In the novel, a young Irish Republican Army operative who wants to break the cycle of violence seeks out a woman whose Ulster policeman husband he helped to murder. As their relationship grows, so do Cal's guilt and sorrow, until, in the end, he is forced to make a sacrifice of himself in order to gain redemption. Rich in ideas and history, this book helps us understand the situation in Northern Ireland--which "is not just there," MacLaverty has remarked, "as a colorful background."

From the Inside Flap

For Cal,some of the choices are devastatingly simple... He can work in an abattoir that nauseates him or join the dole queue; he can brood on his past or plan a future with Marcella. Springing out of the fear and violence of Ulster, Cal is a haunting love stroy in a land were tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393313328
• ISBN 13: 9780393313321
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 153