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A review by balancinghistorybooks
Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell
5.0
I have wanted to read Lucy Caldwell's work for such a long time, and decided to start with her short story collection entitled Multitudes. It has been praised by reviewers and critics alike since its publication in 2016. Eimear McBride comments that these tales are 'beautifully crafted, and so finely balanced that she holds the reader right up against the tender humanity of her characters.' The Scotsman remarks that the collection 'feels like a truly unified work of art.' Caldwell has won numerous awards, and was also shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award in 2012.
The eleven stories in Multitudes largely take as their focus childhood and adolescence, and each one contains the concept of growth, rendered in different and interesting ways. The lives which Caldwell captures here are described in the book's blurb as 'caught in transition between the in-crowd and the out, between love and loneliness, between the city and the country, between home and escape.'
I was immediately struck by the way in which Caldwell captures things. In the story 'Thirteen', she writes: 'Susan and I have been best friends since nursery school - since before nursery school, we always say to each other, in actual fact since Mothers and Toddlers in the hall of the Methodist church on the corner where her street meets mine. I don't remember that far back, only vaguely - plastic cups of orange squash and dusty, frilled-edge biscuits, the smell of floor polish - but I can't remember, let alone imagine, life without her.'
Caldwell has such a realistic perception of how spiteful adolescents can be, and how elements of our childhood become inescapable in adulthood. The concerns of her characters, and their actions and reactions, are so human. In 'Poison', the narrator sees, years later, a teacher who caused a scandal at her school; 'Killing Time' presents a sudden impulsive suicide attempt; the narrator of 'Chasing' moves back to their childhood home, and finds very early on that this course of action is 'not the answer'; and a lesbian relationship is hidden from everyone around the protagonist of 'Here We Are'. There is much exploration in Multitudes of female friendships, and the small toxicities which they so often hold. Love, lust, deception, desire, and guilt have all been chosen as major themes in Multitudes.
Caldwell perfectly controls the vividly rendered physical environments of her stories, and often juxtaposes out-of-place characters into them. In 'Poison', for example, she writes: 'She had too much make-up on: huge swipes of blusher, exaggerated cat-eyes. She glanced around the bar, then she took out her phone again, clicked and tapped at it. She wasn't used to being alone in a bar like this. It was an older crowd and she felt self-conscious, you could tell.'
Caldwell creates such empathy for her wholly memorable cast of characters, and deals with a host of very serious subjects along the way. The author has such a knack for writing plausible characters, and I found myself repeatedly unable to guess where the stories would end up. Multitudes is such an absorbing collection of short stories, and one which I savoured. I found myself pulled into each one of the narratives from their very beginnings. Thought-provoking and refreshing, this is a collection which I cannot recommend highly enough, and I am now on the hunt for the rest of Caldwell's books so that I can become absorbed within her writing once more.
The eleven stories in Multitudes largely take as their focus childhood and adolescence, and each one contains the concept of growth, rendered in different and interesting ways. The lives which Caldwell captures here are described in the book's blurb as 'caught in transition between the in-crowd and the out, between love and loneliness, between the city and the country, between home and escape.'
I was immediately struck by the way in which Caldwell captures things. In the story 'Thirteen', she writes: 'Susan and I have been best friends since nursery school - since before nursery school, we always say to each other, in actual fact since Mothers and Toddlers in the hall of the Methodist church on the corner where her street meets mine. I don't remember that far back, only vaguely - plastic cups of orange squash and dusty, frilled-edge biscuits, the smell of floor polish - but I can't remember, let alone imagine, life without her.'
Caldwell has such a realistic perception of how spiteful adolescents can be, and how elements of our childhood become inescapable in adulthood. The concerns of her characters, and their actions and reactions, are so human. In 'Poison', the narrator sees, years later, a teacher who caused a scandal at her school; 'Killing Time' presents a sudden impulsive suicide attempt; the narrator of 'Chasing' moves back to their childhood home, and finds very early on that this course of action is 'not the answer'; and a lesbian relationship is hidden from everyone around the protagonist of 'Here We Are'. There is much exploration in Multitudes of female friendships, and the small toxicities which they so often hold. Love, lust, deception, desire, and guilt have all been chosen as major themes in Multitudes.
Caldwell perfectly controls the vividly rendered physical environments of her stories, and often juxtaposes out-of-place characters into them. In 'Poison', for example, she writes: 'She had too much make-up on: huge swipes of blusher, exaggerated cat-eyes. She glanced around the bar, then she took out her phone again, clicked and tapped at it. She wasn't used to being alone in a bar like this. It was an older crowd and she felt self-conscious, you could tell.'
Caldwell creates such empathy for her wholly memorable cast of characters, and deals with a host of very serious subjects along the way. The author has such a knack for writing plausible characters, and I found myself repeatedly unable to guess where the stories would end up. Multitudes is such an absorbing collection of short stories, and one which I savoured. I found myself pulled into each one of the narratives from their very beginnings. Thought-provoking and refreshing, this is a collection which I cannot recommend highly enough, and I am now on the hunt for the rest of Caldwell's books so that I can become absorbed within her writing once more.