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Intimacies
‘Precise and beautifully controlled fictions but with strange, wild energies pulsing along just beneath the surface. A tremendous collection.’ Kevin Barry
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*Includes the winner of the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award*
‘Smart, nuanced and sometimes heart-stopping.’ Anne Enright
‘Outstanding.’ Guardian
‘Eleven perfect stories.’ Irish Independent
‘Glorious.’ The Times
‘My FAVE collection ever.’ Pandora Sykes
In eleven stories, Intimacies exquisitely charts the steps and missteps of young women trying to find their place in the world. From a Belfast student ordering illegal drugs online to end an unwanted pregnancy to a young mother’s brush with mortality, and from a Christmas Eve walking the city centre streets when everything seems possible, to a night flight from Canada which could change a life irrevocably, these are stories of love, loss and exile, of new beginnings and lives lived away from ‘home’.
‘Embedded in these stories are exquisite, often moving descriptions where everyday moments mix with the monumental.’ Financial Times
My FAVE short stories ever!
All these stories are perfect but ‘All the People Were Mean and Bad’ slayed me altogether. Pain written with such tenderness. Extraordinary.
These eleven stories are sharp and impactful accounts of young women traversing modern life. As a writer she has a glorious skill for creating narratives in which every element works in perfect tandem ... Intimacies is a memorable and unmissable book from one of Ireland's most essential writers.
An astute observer of the mundane, Caldwell finds poetry – and even a kind of religiosity – in the quotidian rituals of domesticity.
An outstanding collection. Caldwell's skill is evident on every page.
Exquisite.
Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and two collections of short stories: Multitudes and Intimacies. She won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2021 for ‘All the People Were Mean and Bad’. Other awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine…
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