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Book Reviews: Lucy Caldwell's Multitudes tells tales of historic times

Belfast-born author Lucy Caldwell will be reading from her forthcoming short story collection Multitudes, at this month's EastSide arts Festival
Belfast-born author Lucy Caldwell will be reading from her forthcoming short story collection Multitudes, at this month's EastSide arts Festival Belfast-born author Lucy Caldwell will be reading from her forthcoming short story collection Multitudes, at this month's EastSide arts Festival

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell, published by Faber and Faber

AT ONE point, a character in Lucy Caldwell's first collection of short stories, Multitudes, tells another, "these are historic times we're living through". And they are – most of the collection's 11 stories take as their setting the Belfast of the 1980s and 1990s, a city in which "there are places that you never ever go, not on purpose and not even by accident".

Against this backdrop, Caldwell sketches several female protagonists coming of age in an oppressive society; attentive to undercurrents of sexism, racism, transphobia and homophobia.

Some stories are more successful than others, but the best of them offer piercing and believable insights; into schoolyard flirtations with disastrous consequences (Poison), into a rare moment of reprieve for a grief-stricken mother (Inextinguishable), into a precarious teenage romance (Here We Are).

The final, titular story is an example of Caldwell's writing at its most powerful; a glimpse into the days after a woman gives birth to a seriously ill son, it is taut and tender, informed by a gentle wonder.

Tara McEvoy

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain, published in hardback by Chatto & Windus

WHETHER she's writing about life during the Restoration, family dramas in the south of France or the plight of eastern European immigrants, Rose Tremain is a consummate storyteller. At the core of her finely crafted tales are seemingly unremarkable characters whose inner lives throw a subtle light on the way human beings think and feel.

In The Gustav Sonata, two boys forge a lifelong friendship in post-war Switzerland. They're very different. Gustav spends his harsh childhood trying to win the love of his emotionally stunted mother. Talented musician Anton is the much-loved only child of a Jewish family. The counterpoint to their evolving relationship is the history of Switzerland's conduct during the Second World War.

This sounds low-key and it is. There are few great dramas here, just a moving study of human emotions that's full of compassion for even its most unappealing characters, and which will make you cry without being even slightly sentimental.

Jackie Kingsley

Zero K by Don DeLillo, published in hardback by Picador

DON DeLillo's 16th novel arrives after a six-year pause for thought which initially appears to have zero effect on theme or form. Billionaire Ross Lockhart's efforts to freeze and indefinitely prolong the life of his dying wife, as warily observed by son Jeffrey, cover familiar DeLillo ground – death, language, terrorism, NYC – while his dialogue is unchanged, at turns frustrating and exhilarating.

For Zero K's subterranean first half, deep in a secret lab, this stilted extemporising, those beloved lists, do nothing but echo around the precise blankness; only when Jeffrey breaks free do his observations find context, which is (just about) the point – the city, its humanity, gives DeLillo life.

His dead-eyed prescience eclipsed by the phenomenal weight of change post-9/11, like Jeffrey, he is in danger of being lost to the "touchscreen storm" as the world itself is "being lost to the systems". Crucially though he does not fight gnawing obsolescence, his arid humour forever skewering a death-fixated culture, brokering a fragile truce with the setting sun.

Michael Anderson

NON-FICTION

So Sad Today by Melissa Broder, published by Scribe Publications

SO SAD Today began as a pithy, sardonic – and hugely popular – Twitter account run by American poet Melissa Broder, which eventually morphed into this book.

At first, I was unsure whether it would work in anything other than 140-character nuggets, but Broder impressed me with her distinctive stream of consciousness-style that weaves its way through this confessional voyage of self-obsession and self-disgust.

For the most part, her writing is undeniably crude and a little shocking, as she leaves no gory detail of her life undocumented. But, actually, her frank tales of teen sex, life-long eating disorders, failed relationships, vaginal problems and general maladjustment are as hilarious as they are miserable.

For those who were once anxiety-ridden adolescents, there is much to find comfort in – both in confirming that you weren't alone in making silly mistakes then, but also in knowing that adults can still make silly mistakes, too.

Frances Wright