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Cal and Shamie McCluskey are the only Catholic family who are left in the whole estate. Fear has driven the others out but Cal\'s father won\'t move. The family is excluded and isolated.
Cal has no work and so he likes to spend his time at the library. One day he notices a new woman behind the counter. He falls in love with that woman who\'s name is Marcella Morton.
At home his father tells Cal that Crilly, a friend and a former school mate of Cal, wants to meet him. Cal visits Crilly, who is member of the IRA. Finbar Skeffington and Crilly are already waiting for Cal. The reasons why they want to see him his that they need a driver when they rob some places.
Cal doesn\'t want to help them he wants out of that group but as he mentions that they only laugh at him.
After that meeting Cal goes home and finds a note which says: \"Get out you Fenyan scum or we will burn you out. This is your second warning there will be no others. UVF\".
It\'s the idea of people whose faces Cal doesn\'t know hating him that makes his skin crawl. To be hated not for yourself but for what you are.
From this night on Cal can\'t sleep anymore and expects a petrol bomb to be thrown in every second.
It also becomes a regularly thing that Cal has to drive Crilly when he robs shops or something like that.
To earn some money and to give Cal some work Shamie buys a tree which Cal sells after he made small logs of the tree. He sells them to Mrs. Morton who invites him to work for her.
A week after he got the job at the Morton Farm he finds his house burning. Thanks God that nothing has happened to his father. A cousin of Shamie, Dermont Ryan, offers the two homeless guys to stay with him. Cal has another plan. On the farm is a cottage which is empty. That\'s the ideal place for him to say because neither Crilly nor somebody else of the IRA will find him there. It is the only way to get out of everything which has started a year ago when Cal was the driver and Crilly killed Marcella\'s husband Robert Morton. Now he loves that woman and can\'t forget the bad thing he did to her.
After some days the army gets him out of the cottage asking him what he is doing there. He tells them that he is working at the farm and that he is burned out of his own home.
The army takes him to Marcella who allows Cal to live at the cottage and even helps him with furniture for the house. Cal has nothing so she even gives clothes to him, clothes which belonged to her dead husband.
With Cal everything is fine but Shamie can\'t cope with the fact that he lost all the memories of his dead wife and his house.
Shamie gets so depressed that he first stops to work and a little later the doctor puts him in for treatment.
When Marcella\'s mother and father in law go to Belfast for a week she invites Cal to have dinner with her.
The wine makes Cal brave and so he kisses her but she doesn\'t respond. Some days later she apologises for it and tells him that she is fond of him. A little later they lie in bed and make love.
The day Cal buys the Christmas presents he goes to the library to wit for Marcella, but she isn\'t there. He takes some magazines and looks at them as suddenly a voice behind him says \"Good to see you, Cal\". Without turning around Cal knows that it is Crilly. Before Crilly takes Cal with him, he shows Cal the bomb he is hiding at the library.
Skeffington wants to have a word with Cal, so they visit him. They have once again the talk about Cal wanting out but the police interrupts them. The three guys try to run away but Crilly and Finbar are caught only Cal is able to escape without being seen.
On his way back to the farm he informs the police that there is a bomb at the library.
After an hour walk he arrives at home and is welcomed by Marcella.
Again they enjoy a night together.
The next day, Christmas Eve, the police comes and arrests Cal.
Characters:
Cal McCluskey
Cal is a Catholic. He is 19 years old and has long hair. Because of the length of the hair he has developed some female gestures. He loves music and to play the guitar. He has no job and so he likes to go to the library. Cal is a heavy smoker. Of his family only his dad is left. Cal\'s elder brother Brendan also died in an car accident. A little later his mother, Gracie, died. Cal was only 8 years old. Shamie tried to replace her but he failed.
Cal has no friends. There is Crilly, but he is not his real friend.
Shamie McCluskey
He is Cal\'s father. During the day he works at the abattoir and at night he loves to watch westerns. He changed totally after he lost the house and the garden he liked so much. He lost all interests. Shamie\'s strong voice lost all the strength and in a couple of weeks he aged like in 20 years. In the end the doctor put him in for treatment.
Marcella Morton (former D\'Agostino)
Marcella is from Italy. She is small, has dark hair and very brown eyes. It is difficult to guess her age but Cal thinks she is in her late 20ies. After her husband dies she starts to work at the library. Her husband, Robert Morton, was a Protestant to whom she was married more than 5 years. Like Cal she is a Catholic. Her daughter Lucy is the most important thing for her in her life.
Marcella studied at Glasgow.
The relationship to her mother in law, Mrs. Morton isn\'t very good. Sometimes Marcella is even afraid of her husbands mother.
Crilly
Crilly is a friend and a former school mate of Cal. If he wants he really can be nasty. He is very tall and has large ears which stick out at the right angles.
He is a kind of bully boy and obviously a member of the IRA.
Finbar Skeffington
Finbar is about 30 years old and a teacher. He is small, has a round face and teeth like a rabbit. It seems as he is the boss of the organisation which is in close contact with the IRA or a part of the IRA.
The problems in Northern Ireland showed by the book
Cal is not only the story of a young guy between two parties who just wants to be left in peace. Springing out of the fear and violence of Northern Ireland, Cal is a sad love story in a land where tenderness and innocence can only flicker briefly in the dark. The author describes the lives of the characters with tremendously moving skill.
The way how Bernard Mac Laverty describes the troubles in Northern Ireland and how it is reflected in the habitants lives: the tv is full of stories, for example: \"The Army had shot a deaf mute, saying that he had been seen carrying a weapon, but by the time they had reached the dead man an accomplice had removed the gun. A Catholic father of three had been stabbed to death in a Belfast entry. The police said that there was no known motive for the killing.\" Every day Catholics are shot dead for no apparent reason, as the police says. But not only killed before they die they have to suffer from torture.
People say that the group who wins the propaganda war will win the rest too. So everybody who isn\'t member of an organisation is \"keeping the Brits there\".
A united Ireland? One island one country? What\'s so bad? In Protestants\' opinion they will be ruled from Rome then and say that Ulsterman would die rather than live under the yoke of Roman Catholicism.
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