Cal door Bernard MacLaverty

Data

• The title of the book is Cal.
• The author of the book is Bernard MacLaverty.
• First published by Jonathan Cape Ltd, Lomdon, 1983.

The resume of Cal:

The book go’s about Cal, a nineteen-year-old Catholic boy. He lives together with his father, Shamie, in a village in the North of Ireland. They live in a Protestant neighbourhood.
When Cal finished (high) school, he gets a job offered by his father to work in the slaughterhouse. However, his stomach can’t stand it, so he quits the job. Shamie is very disappointed. Crilly, an old friend from high school, also a Catholic, takes over the job. Cal mostly lies on his bed smoking cigarettes. He is too lazy to find a new job. 
Crilly is a member of the IRA. He works for Skeffington, also an old friend from high school. He asks Cal to help him by driving the car during robberies. 
He does this a few times. Then he has to drive Crilly to the house of a policeman named Robert Morton. Against all expectations Crilly shoots the man. He is dead before he touches the ground. With his last breath he calls his wife: ‘Marcella!’
After this event Shamie and Cal receive threatening letters from Protestants. They threaten to burn down their house. Cal pretends he is not scared. He and his father take measures, but they know it will happen one day.
During these times Cal often goes to the library. One day he comes in and discovers there is a new female employee. She is very pretty. Then he finds out her name is Marcella (!).She is also Catholic. After that he sees her more often. The more he sees her, the more he likes her. One day he helps her with her shopping bags. From that day on they sometimes chat.
His father decides to help him find a job and he arranges some trees so Cal can hew the wood. As he comes by the Morton family to sell wood, Mrs Morton asks him in. She offers him a job at their farm. He takes the job so he can be close to Marcella. Marcella lives on the farm with her parents in law. He doesn’t tell Crilly about his new job.
Then he’s house is burned down. Cal's father is completely depressed. After the fire he goes to live with a friend. Cal can live there too but he decides not to. He doesn’t tell his father were he is going to live because he thinks it could bring him danger.
He feels guilty about the murder in regards to Marcella. So he wants to quit working for the IRA; he does not want to drive anymore. But he knows what the price will be when he decides to quit. They will see him as a betrayer and he will be killed. He decides to go into hiding.

The Morton’s own a small cottage. They don’t use it anymore so Cal decides that’s going to be the place he will live in. At first he does that in secret. Then the Morton’s family finds out he is there. They think it’s an intruder so they sent people from the army. When they find out it is Cal who secretly lives there they are very angry but then, they come with a proposal suggested by Marcella. He can live in the cottage if he fixes up the place up, otherwise the army will brick it up because it’s in terrible state. Marcella gives Cal some of her dead husband's clothes and they fix up the cottage a little. He gets to speak with her more often now and their relationship gets better.  He finds out she is very lonely and unhappy living with her parents-in-law. He also notices the relationship between her husband and her before he died wasn’t very good. 
Cal falls in love with her more and more. It’s tearing him apart because he feels very guilty about her husband’s death. 
When Mr and Mrs Morton are away for the week (Mr Morton is ill, he is going to be operated for his lungs) they are together a lot. She asks him to have dinner with her. After dinner he kisses her. She is very confused by this; she says she had no idea he was in love with her. But later that week she suddenly comes to the cottage and they have sex.
In the meanwhile it is getting worse with Cal’s father Shamie. He is more depressed and he now looks like an old man. Cal wants to visit him more often but can’t because he’s afraid he will see by someone from the IRA. The next time he goes to visit him his father isn’t there anymore. He has been put in treatment.
After his visit he goes to the library. There something terrible happens; he bumps into Crilly. He hears from him the IRA wants to blow up the library. Crilly has just placed a bomb in a book. Crilly takes Cal to Skeffington. There is a strange atmosphere there. In a way they are very angry at him but they also are nice to him. 
Than suddenly the police knocks on the door. They are surrounded. Cal is lucky and escapes through the backyard. He doesn’t know what happened to Crilly and Skeffington but he runs. In a telephone booth he calls the police and tells them about the bomb in the library.
Then he goes back to Marcella. He feels like it’s going to be the last time because he thinks Crilly and Skeffington are caught by the police and have given Cal’s name. They have sex again. The next morning the police comes to get him. Cal feels grateful that ‘at last someone was going to beat him to within an inch of his life’.