I know little about the city of Belfast and to my shame knew nothing about its part in WWII. Lucy Caldwell’s debut historical fiction novel puts that right by exploring the four nights that comprised the harrowing events of the Belfast Blitz as seen through the eyes of one family, laying bare the impact these events had on the ordinary person. Through vivid descriptions and stark prose, Caldwell has rendered the devastation and damage of the conflict something that I am unlikely to forget. From the destruction of the swathes of terraced houses in the north of the city where the objective can have only have been to instil terror into the hearts and minds of the residents, to the makeshift morgues and piles of bodies not yet in coffins, this is an incredibly evocative look at the Belfast Blitz (April to May 1941),

The Bell’s are a middle-class family in a city which has so far escaped the worst of WWII when the novel opens in April 1941 and are comprised of doctor Phillip, wife Florence, daughters Audrey and Emma and younger son, Paul. To an outside observer Florence is a happily married wife and mother, but emotionally she is far more conflicted than it appears, pining for a first love that she only allows herself to covet during the weekly visit to church. Eldest daughter, Audrey, is twenty-one and works in the tax office. She looks set for marriage to a doctor who works alongside her father while privately harbouring serious doubts about whether such a conventional future is right for her. Emma is a serious and stubborn eighteen-year-old who in the first throes of a clandestine relationship with an older female at the First Aid Post where she is volunteering and feeling increasingly stifled at home. Told from the perspectives of mother and both daughters within the Bell family, the novel also loosely follows the stories of several people connected to the family. This helps to gives a broader understanding of the impact of the events of the Belfast Blitz across society and social class.

The period detail and descriptions of a ravaged Belfast and its citizens are excellent and evidently well-researched, and I found this aspect of the novel infinitely superior to the characterisation, with both Bell sisters frustratingly underexplored. Furthermore both of the sister’s story arcs are disappointingly predictable (especially that of Emma, the LGBT representative) and it is their mother, a woman some twenty years older, that I found more sensitively explored and memorably well-observed. I did find the prose wasn’t always the easiest to follow and at points it felt like the story was one of discrete scenes stitched together that lacked cohesion. However for all the atrocity, carnage and bloodshed contained within this short but poignant novel it is not without hope and a real sense of optimism, not just for Belfast as a city but for all its citizens.

"This city. Its women. Its children. Its future."

'These Days' by Lucy Caldwell is a stunning, devastating novel which unfolds during the Belfast Blitz and explores many untold stories about the cost of war. To my great shame, I knew virtually nothing about the bombing of Belfast - four air raids taking place across April and May of 1941 destroying much of the city, and one of which led to the greatest loss of life in any night raid outside of London. The novel is mainly written from the perspectives of Emma and Audrey Bell, grown-up sisters whose father, Philip, is a doctor. Audrey is working in a tax office and is engaged to be married, while Emma is a volunteer first-aider who is in a secret relationship with another woman. We also follow the perspectives of other, mainly female, characters including their mother, Florence, and Maisie, a six-year-old girl from a poorer part of the city whose path will cross with the Bell family during one of the air raids.

Caldwell uses these air raids to punctuate the novel and they are all harrowingly described; in particular, the section covering Easter Tuesday raid in the middle of the novel is unputdownable. Unlike the first raid, the Bell family are scattered across the city and we experience the bombing from each of their perspectives. Caldwell conveys the horror and strangeness of living in a city which has been transformed beyond recognition overnight; there are many scenes which will stay with me for a long time, not least a visit to a makeshift mortuary.

At the same time, Caldwell shows the ways in which life continues even amidst death on a massive scale. I was in awe of how much detail she manages to include: in what still feels like a relatively slender novel, she writes illuminatingly about domestic service, dances, office work, black market trips over the border to Dublin evacuation, rationing, different types of romantic and sexual relationship and much more. All the characters feel fully realised, and Caldwell's writing takes us into the heart of each of them. There were so many passages I highlighted because I loved them so much - one elegiac lament towards the end of the novel for all that has been lost stands out for its anguished lyricism.

There is so much to love and admire about this extraordinary novel, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Thank you to NetGalley and Faber for sending me an ARC to review.

Until I read this novel I had been unaware of the sustained bombing campaign on Belfast during the Second World War.

The author uses key characters to examine how the bombing effected the lives of the 'ordinary' man, and woman. Florence Bell is the matriarch, married to Dr Philip Bell whose life is at the hospital seeking to help the injured, their eldest daughter Audrey becomes engaged to a younger doctor and her sister, eighteen year old Emma works as a first-aider rather than in an office as her elder sister does. Then there is the baby of the family, Paul who is just in his teens and still sees excitement in the times changed. There are other more minor characters who all have their own story which this gentle book explores.

This book accurately shows how despite all external forces, what matters to each and every character is really their own loves and losses. Prepare to be enchanted.

An emotional read set in 1941 in Belfast during the devastating Blitz raids on that city. Historically fascinating as I was sadly ignorant of the Belfast bombings but bought to life through Lucy's book. Several different story lines, some more engaging than others. I found the 'Irish' words scattered throughout a little difficult at the beginning but did get used to them. Horrific scenes of the aftermath of the bombings, death and destruction but so well written to draw the reader in. I did have to skip the almost blow by blow account of a football match being less than interested in that sport and also the list of streets affected. Interesting, even if slightly contrived, characters, give a human touch to the brutality of that time,.

What a stunning book! I loved the writing and there were so many moments where it broke my heart. I can't wait to read more by this author.

This is a quiet book that explores the lives of women against a background of the Belfast Blitz. Sadly, I found the stories a bit engaging and almost too schematic, especially in the two sisters: the serious one in an affair with another woman; the pretty one who is respectably engaged but doesn't want conventional marriage and kids. The stories are unresolved, and there's a coming-of-age feel complicated by the war. Plenty of research has gone into this but it didn't come alive as much as I'd wished, but an interesting setting.

What a superb novel. From the very first page I was engrossed in the story of the Bell family and their experience of Belfast under attack from German bombing raids in April 1941. Dr Philip Bell, despite being an experienced physician, returns home emotionally shattered by his Blitz hospital duties and Florence, his wife, sums up the psychological horror as she cares for her exhausted husband: ‘It will never go away, she wants to say then. None of it does – the real or the imagined. Once you have seen those images, whether with your eyes or in your mind’s eye, they are etched there – seared into the body. They are there for ever and you can’t pretend otherwise.’
The parents are very well depicted but the most memorable characters are their daughters Audrey and Emma. The former is newly engaged to be married and yet it becomes increasingly clear that she is questioning her conventional future. Is there nothing more for her than domesticity? Her younger sister, Emma, is experiencing her first same-sex love affair, all the more potent for being forbidden. And yet, she must accept that her feelings be kept secret.
The author writes brilliantly about the chaos of the city under fire. The descriptions of the bombed-out houses, the shattered streets, the pathetically inadequate shelters and the overrun hospital are incredibly vivid. Perhaps most striking is the depiction of the temporary mortuary at the Markets: ‘The faces in the coffins are grey-green now. Hair still tangles, eyes still staring. There has been no one to wash the bodies, to close the eyelids, and so the wretched souls stare straight at you, through you.’
Lucy Caldwell, winner of the BBC Short Story Award 2021, is a marvellous writer. Whilst her story certainly encourages the reader to confront the collective horrors of civilian life in wartime, the quality of her prose ensures that we are deeply moved by the situation of every individual she brings to life. Highly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1941, this is a snapshot of one middle class family’s day to day life during the time of the Belfast Blitz. In the opening chapters we meet each of the members of the Bell family. Philip Bell a GP, his wife Florence and their three children, Emma, Audrey and Paul. The two girls now grown up, with Audrey working in the tax office (Inland Revenue) and Emma a volunteer first aider who would like to follow in her father’s footsteps. Paul is a young teenager, and brings a lot of the light heartedness to the book with the typical interests a boy of that age in the 1940’s would have.

It covers much of the social history of the time. Emma falls in love with her volunteering groups leader – Sylvia. They find they have much in common and find mutual attraction and a love for each other. Her sister Audrey feels under ever increasing pressure to conform to what was expected back then, to marry, become a housewife and have a family of her own, something Audrey wasn’t at all sure she actually wanted.

As the book moves on and the raids continue, the attacks become ever more prolonged wreaking destruction and havoc in their wake, with many losing loved ones, their homes, everything. This part of the book is very revealing, not to mention moving. I had no idea that Ireland was so badly hit during the war. Ordinary people caught up in a tragedy not of their making. It makes you stop and think about war and the utter misery it inflicts upon ordinary civilians – absolutely heartbreaking.

I enjoyed reading the acknowledgements at the end of the book. When you read how much research has gone into the writing to portray a realistic picture of life during that incredibly difficult time, it hits home that these were real people, this is a part of history that we should be reminded of. A moving and poignant story but ending with hope.

I found the narrative, especially further into the book, quite profound and have really struggled to think of what to say to give the writing the credit it deserves. I hope I’ve at least reflected how much of an impression it made on me.

**Review to be posted to blog around publication date and to Good Reads today.**

I was drawn to this book due to its author Lucy Caldwell being winner of the prestigious BBC Short Story Award in 2021 for “All the People Were Mean and Bad” – I did not particularly like the anti-story-of-Noah world view underlying that story’s title and bookending the narrative, but the writing and observational style was very strong. But more impressive is that she has previously been shortlisted twice for the award - impressive because this is a prize which is initially judged blind.

The author is also a novelist and won the also presitigious Desmond Elliott Prize with her second novel “The Meeting Point” in 2011 – this is her fourth novel and on publication in 2022 will be her first for nine years.

The book is historical fiction, which successfully if perhaps unspectacularly combines: insight into, at least to me, largely unknown story of the way, the Belfast Blitz: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_Blitz), a series of destructive (in both property and lives) series of four German bombing attacks on military and manufacturing targets in Belfast in April-May 1941; extensive but not heavy handed period detail and social insight; and family drama, with the story of two sisters and their mother all torn by the difference between their external lives and their internal desires.

The book is arranged over three sections, each set in around and named after one of the main historical attack series: The Dockside Raid, the Easter Raid, the Fire Raids.

The family at the heart of the book are those of Dr Philip Bell, his young son Paul and three main point of view protagonists (we only ever see Philip and Paul from the outside): his wife Florence (ostensibly happily married but still harbouring thoughts for her first love), Emma (volunteering as a First Aider and increasingly attracted to a fellow but older First Aider Sylvia), Audrey (an office worker but heading, with some ambivalence, for a conventional future and marriage to another Doctor – Richard).

If I had some criticisms: I felt that the Belfast dialect was added in a rather clumsy fashion, I also felt the tangent of the two sister’s story was perhaps a little predictable.

But the book’s real strength is in giving a real sense of the impact of the attacks on the civilian population of Belfast: the shock of the initial attack, the sense that however much they had prepared for a possible attack (both domestically and professionally in the case of Philip and Emma) they were really not at all prepared for the fear of an actual attack and the horror of its aftermath; and the longer term impact as it questions both individual and societal norms.

Belfast, 1941 is the setting for Lucy Caldwell’s latest novel These Days.
Despite the war, the city hasn’t fared too badly by Spring of this year. Food is probably more plentiful than it is in England, and Belfast benefits from the neutrality of neighbouring Southern Ireland, when the Customs Men have been circumvented. But the increased prosperity gained from the wartime contacts awarded to the shipyards becomes a liability when the Luftwaffe embark upon a concerted bombing campaign subsequently referred to as the Belfast Blitz.
Sisters Emma and Audrey Bell have both discovered the joy of what, for both, will become ill-fated love affairs. They live in middle class comfort in the East of the city, Audrey works in the tax office and Emma volunteers at a First Aid Post. As the bombing intensifies and more damage is caused and the death toll rises, no lives are left untouched by the horror.
Lucy Caldwell employs her elegant and sincere style in relating these harrowing events, providing lighter relief by Emma and Audrey’s stories and that of Florence, their mum, who is perhaps the most interesting character in the book. Ms Caldwell’s research has been comprehensive, leaving this Belfast native embarrassed by having learnt so much. Her descriptions of Belfast, so different 80 years on, and yet still so much the same, are vivid and heartfelt and her genuine characters jump to life from the pages. Possibly a little over-egged on the dialect front, but only here and there.

These Days was a stark and honest reflection of the darker days of the war and the impact it had on the average person living through it all. Caldwell skillfully balances destruction with hope and pain with happiness. While the writing style wasn't my personal favourite, the characters were lively throughout. There were one too many chapters here and there on certain side characters that I felt were unnecessary, but otherwise, the plot was easy to follow. I particularly enjoyed reading about Emma, who was in love with a woman at a time where this was an unspoken taboo. LGBTQ+ characters are scarce in this genre and Emma was a refreshing change to read about. Vivid characters and a heartbreaking look back at our darkest times, These Days was a book that will surely have people talking.