Lucy Caldwell – Literary Connections

Audio version

Author Lucy Caldwell has always been on my radar, ever since I learned that she went to school round the corner from where I lived and often used her Belfast heritage as locations for her books. I have read her novels and short stories avidly over the years and was very fortunate recently to meet up with her at the Crescent Arts in Belfast before the launch of her new short story collection Openings. I was also fascinated to hear that her English teacher at school was none other than the newly qualified Wendy Erskine – herself now a published short story author (Dance Move being her most recent collection) with a novel well on the way. At the time there was only a few years between them and now they are firm friends. Lucy told me that she also had the privilege of editing one of Wendy’s short stories for the compilation of Irish Short Stories Being Various a few years ago.

She moved to England for University, publishing her first novel before graduating and then onto London for her Masters. Like many others before her she married and then settled in London before moving to Kent with her family but her N Ireland heritage has never strayed far away and in recent years she can regularly be found back in Belfast and is much in demand as a speaker and teacher of her craft. She is an integral and much beloved part of the NI Literary Community.

I specially loved her fourth novel These Days which is based in East Belfast during the Belfast Blitz in 1941. It is based on a doctor’s family – their fictional home is round the corner from where I used to live so the streets the two daughters walk are familiar to me as are the journeys they take across town. The two daughters are as unalike as chalk and cheese – one is conventional and ‘stepping’ out with her suitable boyfriend. The other is less so - she chooses to live more dangerously - working as a first aider with the volunteers who rescue those caught up in bomb explosions and fires caused by incendiaries. Templemore Avenue and the surrounding areas were badly hit by the Blitz and the traumatic events are still recalled by many of the older generation as well as being retold down through family trees. Lucy used her childhood contacts to research wartime memories, mostly on the phone as Covid curtailed travel from her London home. She made the most of her husband’s homeworking time to share the child minding which released her to dedicate big chunks of her day to the project completing the first draft in just 11 weeks during Lockdown.

Her dedication paid off as the resulting book has won the prestigious Whitbread Prize for Historical Fiction and she has firmly cemented her place nationally in the literary landscape.

Her short stories are thoughtful, observant and engaging, reflecting life first as a young girl in Multitudes then on up through to Motherhood in the award winning collection of short stories Intimacies – but they are not memoirs. Her characters live on the page and are carefully crafted, along with the stories themselves. She takes her inspiration from ordinary people in ordinary situations but manages to create something extraordinary.

It was lovely to meet her and to discover that not only did she go to school near my home but she frequented Tullycarnet Library were I worked for a few years after she left for University and that she now lives in Kent near to were my brother still lives. It is true that NI is a small place and, if we look hard enough, we can find tenuous connections to most people and I am thrilled to have found some with the brilliant Lucy Caldwell!