Description

Book Synopsis
For Cal, some 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 story in a land were tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.

Trade Review
Simple humanity, eloquently caught....Though Cal is a bleak novel, there is a flicker of lyricism running through it, like the sun shining through the shattered windows of a ruined church * New York Times *
To fashion a short, telling novel out of the hideous complexities of Northern Ireland takes narrative skill of a high order. In Cal Bernard MacLaverty has managed to do it superbly -- Nina Bawden
It performs the remarkable feat of compressing into its short span both a doomed love affair and an account of the impossibility of living, in the circumstances of that doomed province, without redemption and without punishment… MacLaverty has a true feeling for tragedy’ -- Anita Brookner

Cal

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    A Paperback / softback by Bernard MacLaverty

    £9.49

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    RRP £9.99 – you save £0.50 (5%)

    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Tue 25 Aug 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Penguin Random House Group
      Imprint Vintage
      Published 7 May 1998
      ISBN-13 9780099767114
      978-0099767114
      ISBN-10 0099767112
      Also in:
      Contemporary Fiction

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      For Cal, some 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 story in a land were tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark.

      Trade Review
      Simple humanity, eloquently caught....Though Cal is a bleak novel, there is a flicker of lyricism running through it, like the sun shining through the shattered windows of a ruined church * New York Times *
      To fashion a short, telling novel out of the hideous complexities of Northern Ireland takes narrative skill of a high order. In Cal Bernard MacLaverty has managed to do it superbly -- Nina Bawden
      It performs the remarkable feat of compressing into its short span both a doomed love affair and an account of the impossibility of living, in the circumstances of that doomed province, without redemption and without punishment… MacLaverty has a true feeling for tragedy’ -- Anita Brookner

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