Bernard MacLaverty’s work has always resonated with me and I would rate Cal as one of the best novels I’ve read, but this very short story about trust and loss has also lingered in my mind for years. Its concept is simple: a boy about to take A-Levels is called away from his girlfriend, who he’s been studying with, and walks to the house of his great-aunt, who is expected to die that evening. Other family members are with her and as he waits and prays with them, he thinks back over his relationship with her and especially to a pivotal moment eight years before. MacLaverty is brilliant at evoking both the sense of a place and at building an overwhelming sense of emotion, which gains its power partly by being so rooted in what is ordinary and understandable. The betrayal in this story is small and relatable, rooted as it is in curiosity, but overwhelming in the damage it does to the relationship and to the boy’s sense of himself. His deep sadness as he tries to find out whether his great-aunt has forgiven him pulses through the narrative.
In Secrets and Other Stories, Viking, 1984
