Cal has very few choices in life. He can continue working at the abattoir that sickens him, or join the ranks of the unemployed. He can brood on his past or try to plan a future with Marcella. Cal is a haunting love story set against the fear and violence of Ulster, where tenderness and innocence must struggle to survive.

Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast in 1942, and moved to Scotland in 1975. He is the author of the novels Lamb (1980); Cal (1983); Grace Notes (1997); and The Anatomy School (2001), set in Belfast in the late 1960s. Both Lamb and Cal have been made into major films for which he wrote the screenplays, and he has written various versions of his fiction for radio, television and screen. Grace Notes was awarded the 1997 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award and shortlisted for many other major prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award. His books of short stories are Secrets & Other Stories (1977); A Time to Dance & Other Stories (1982); The Great Profundo & Other Stories (1987); Walking the Dog & Other Stories (1994), and most recently, Matters of Life & Death (2006).