Cal Lesson Plan

How does MacLaverty go about introducing us to the setting of Cal? Is he explicit with his exposition, or does he let the reader figure it out on their own?

In the opening chapter of Cal, the reader is right away dropped into the action surrounding Cal McCluskey, a young man at the the edges of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) who is trying to deal with the constant threat of attack from the Loyalist army, which desires to oust all Catholic families from the neighborhood.

Without much introduction to the historical situation, we are transported to the gritty and dangerous setting of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, a time of great political conflict between those who...