Where They Were Missed - Softcover

Caldwell, Lucy

3.76

94 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0670916056 ISBN 13: 9780670916054

Publisher: Viking, 2006

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It is Belfast in the 1980s and Daisy and Saoirse are living through the hottest summer ever. The yard is too hot, their mother keeps flying off the handle and their father doesn't come home until late. Things aren't improved by the neighbourhood children who call them names and leave nasty things on their doorstep. Police sirens whine through the streets at night and Daisy asks why they can't have a mural painted on their house like the other houses down the road. As the two girls dream of ice creams from Antonini's and the characters from their bedtime stories, it's clear that their parents are struggling with each other and the political violence outside that is forcing them ever closer together and yet is also smashing them apart.

Then one day a tragedy occurs and life changes for good. Ten years later Saoirse is in Gweebarra Bay in Southern Ireland, living with her aunt and uncle, far from the sadness of her childhood in Belfast. She has managed to hook a good-looking local lad and is preparing for the school dance. But there is still an aching absence in her life and soon she will discover that her extended family is holding the secret to what really happened when she left her childhood home.

Where they were Missed is a moving meditation on the beauty and sadness of northern Ireland as political violence bleeds into everyday life but above all it is the story of an ordinary family, about children and marriage and how loss can help us grow up, but also can undo us.

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Review:

'A debut reminiscent of Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden and Trezza Azzopardi's The Hiding Place' -- Vogue

'A heartbreaking, evocative story of a family torn apart and how impossible it is to put the pieces back together’ -- Irish Independent

'A spirited work, for all its sadness, and written with insight and economy. And its adolescent vernacular is spot on' -- TLS

'[A] haunting tale of a young girl's search for redemption' -- Harper's Bazaar

‘A touching and greatly haunting read’ -- OK!

‘Engaging and finely-crafted . . . it is a pleasure to read a novelist who captures some of the genuine confusion of childhood’ -- Big Issue

‘In conception and execution Where they were missed is a work of the highest order: unsettling, unflinching, but finally uplifting' -- Glenn Patterson

About the Author:

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1982. She won the Peggy Ramsay Award for playwriting and has recently been selected to be a playwright in residence at the National Theatre.

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