Reviews

3.5 stars really. I grew up in East Belfast and was living in the city during the periods covered by the book. It was good to recognise place names, areas and streets where the stories were set.
I enjoyed most of the them with some others, not so much. 'The Ally Ally O', 'Poison' and 'Here We Are' had good messages to convey but suffered by meandering and being poorly structured. 'Thirteen', 'Cypress Avenue' and 'Inextinguishable' were well written and punchy and conveyed the emotions of those particular periods in life.

ridgewaygirl's review against another edition

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5.0

There's little less satisfying than a short story that doesn't get it quite right. And it's a hard medium to master; every element that a novel allows chapters to communicate, must be evident in a handful of paragraphs. Fully rounded characters must spring from a half dozen lines and the theme and plot must be pared down until each sentence serves a specific purpose. But when a short story works, it's like a shot of whiskey or a kick in the head, everything is there, all at once.

Lucy Caldwell's book of short stories is a rare case of a collection in which each of the eleven stories works. Centered on the city of Belfast, the collection tells of ordinary people, usually children or teenagers, figuring out life. Often the protagonists feel like outsiders, or are dissatisfied in ways that can't always be communicated to their friends or family. Belfast, its weather, houses, roads and schools, is evocatively described. This is a lovely collection of stories, each of which stands ably on its own. I'll be looking for more by this author.

manoncremers's review

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4.0

Not often do I come across a book whose title actually perfectly embodies what it is hiding inside. Multitudes, however, is such a book. Having read Lucy Caldwell's Mayday and Here We Are before, I was already similar to some extent with how Caldwell masterfully creates a story that each time is unlike what she's written before. Each story in Multitudes forms its own entity; its own voices; its own desires. Yet once put together, these slices of life accumulate to various levels of the same feelings of nostalgia and melancholia. And even though my ratings for these eleven stories are as numerous as the stories themselves, the five-star ones compensate for all of it. While Through The Wardrobe, Here We Are, Ally Ally O, and Killing Time flung me back to a time filled with teenage angst, annoyance, giggles, and lies, specifically Poison and Thirteen struck me the most because of how they demonstrated the lengths pre-teens (myself included) were willing to go for the approval and even admiration of their peers.

Oh how we thought we were already adults, when our lives had only just begun.

zoeoemania's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

kycerae's review

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

appelsien's review

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3.0

Heb het gevoel dat dit diep kon zijn en het was ook heel herkenbaar soms... maar nog net iets vaker té cheesy

marireadstoomuch's review against another edition

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5.0

Without a hint of awareness I thought to myself “this collection contains multitudes you know” as I neared the final story. Apt title, as it were.

Sometimes short story collections can bore me as I don’t fully connect with them due to their brevity, and that’s certainly not a problem here. Each story in Multitudes contains a fully realized character, in a fully realized place, and I felt connected to all of them — and at times struggled to move on.

The level of depth of feeling achieved in each story was an absolute triumph, and at times reminded me of moment in Emma Donoghue’s _Hood_. What stood out most is perhaps the inherent reality in the mundane: capturing depths of feeling directly is easy in a relative sense, but Caldwell excels at making experiences feel real by focusing not on the peak of drama (always), but also the Afters, the day-to-day, the recollection, the reflection, the moving forward.

Really, really good.

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