Openings - by Lucy Caldwell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A stunning collection" (Tessa Hadley) of thirteen powerful stories about motherhood and marriage from acclaimed Northern Irish writer Lucy Caldwell.

"It takes a writer as subtle, compassionate and clear-eyed as Caldwell to track the hidden forces that work upon us...This is prose that liberates." --Claire Kilroy, author of Soldier Sailor

I still sometimes wonder if one could draw a window in the wall, or in the air, and step through it together. To somewhere else, entirely new.

From a highly charged Christmas party in Belfast to a passionate affair in Blitz-era London, to a trip to Marrakech which could form a new family, the stories in Openings pulse with possibility and illuminate those fleeting but recognisable moments of heartbreak and hope that can change the course of a life.

Review Quotes

"You'll lose yourself in this collection and, most likely, find yourself too. Each story is a masterclass." --Jan Carson

"It takes a writer as subtle, compassionate and clear-eyed as Caldwell to track the hidden forces that work upon us, to illuminate our secret selves. This is prose that liberates." --Claire Kilroy

"Caldwell has a glorious skill for creating narratives in which every element works in perfect tandem." --SUNDAY TIMES

"What a mature and rich and rare writer Caldwell has become, these stories are so varied, so subtle, so tonally poised." - --Tessa Hadley

"Caldwell has a glorious skill for creating narratives in which every element works in perfect tandem." - --The Times

"One of the finest short-storywriters at work today. These stories are honest, finely nuanced and indelible." --Wendy Erskine

"Nobody gets more into a short story than Lucy Caldwell [...] Nobody writes about parenthood better...Caldwell is superb at evoking the density of experience that we all cram into our ordinary days and nights. In these stories, emotional truth hinges on the smallest movements of a sentence, a paragraph. It's all in the turn of a word; and, in Caldwell's extraordinary pages, there's never a word out of place." --Kevin Power, Irish Independent

"Enlightening and enriching...Throughout there is Caldwell's trademark thoughtfulness and compassion, which manifests on the page as a longing for her characters to live well...Her oeuvre is very much in the vein of writers such as Tessa Hadley and Anne Enright, where extraordinary attention to detail makes the ordinary feel special or new." --Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times

About the Author

Born in Belfast in 1981, Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three previous collections of short stories. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, she was also the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories in 2019, and has won the E. M. Forster Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Walter Scott Prize among others.