Lucy Caldwell

From Belfast to London and back again the eleven stories that comprise Caldwell's first collection explore the many facets of growing up - the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative - or 'the drunkenness of things being various'. Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.

"Beautifully crafted, and so finely balanced that she holds the reader right up against the tender humanity of her characters." - Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing From Belfast to London and back again the eleven stories that comprise Caldwell's first collection explore the many facets of growing up - the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative - or "the drunkenness of things being various". Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.

Two sisters, four nights, one city. April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war -- so far. Over the next two months, it's going to be destroyed from above, so that people will say, in horror, My God, Belfast is finished. Many won't make it through, and no one who does will remain unchanged. Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey -- one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman -- as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz, These Days is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.