These Days

The descriptions of the bombing in Belfast are harrowing and well written. They were obviously well researched. My mother was living in Belfast at the time and the street she lived in was bombed. Her stepfather and sister were killed in the raid and she and her mother were taken to hospital and survived. When she talked to anyone about it she always called it the ‘Raid’. I never heard her describe it as the Blitz. Maybe that term was applied later. The book feels to me, as if the author had this mass of research on the bombings and had to leaven it with people and their stories. The characters were not well drawn and it was hard to feel any empathy with them. Added to this was the feeling I had, that there were ‘issues’ the author wanted to bring to our attention - a lesbian relationship, women’s rights ,(losing your job when you got married if you were a woman ) and contraception. All would have been controversial at that time and probably added little to the story.

Lucy Caldwell has a gift for bringing to life the everyday details of the texture of suburban family life. So there is an appropriately stark contrast when normal life is disrupted by war. The domestic situation continues in a familiar setting under extraordinary stress. In some ways this is similar to our experience 80 years later during the COVID-19 lockdown. I felt myself to be part of the family. I worried for each of them and appreciated the strength they needed to find to cope with the fear, discomfort, changes, uncertainty and inconvenience of a city under attack and a nation at war. I hadn't even realised before that Belfast came under aerial attack during the Second World War. However involved in a story I become, it's very rare for me to shed tears. I was surprised to do so with These Days. It was a cumulative pressure and tension which required release.