#jan carson

Quickly, While They Still Have Horses: Stories by Jan Carson

i am really getting into this little microgenre of connected surreal short stories/vignettes/narratives. Craft was so excellent, and Rakesfall broke my brain in great ways, and Tauhou was so dreamlike and encompassing. Quickly falls right into this tiny category for me, more on the short story end of things than the others but still feeling like it's creating a world that looks like some part of ours, with just the smallest unreal quirks.

the connective tissue here is the political and social landscape of Northern Ireland, and the shadow of the Troubles across stories that span time, borders, boundaries, and peace lines. the emotional logic of the surreal elements—a severed hand that keeps reappearing in a fridge in Ulster, a Catholic ghost haunting a used car bought by Protestants, miracle healing offered and joked about and achieved—hits just right in a setting haunted by violence and division and getting on with life in spite of those things. if a bomb could go off anywhere, any moment, and a fenced wall divides that sort's neighborhood from this sort's, then why couldn't a pillar of heatless fire and smoke be a mental health support device? even the stories that aren't explicitly surreal deal little electric shocks of surprise, highlighting grief or numbness or resilience or love within the mundane everyday.

for half a minute i thought about picking a favorite story to highlight in this review, but looking through them i don't think i can! each one was so sparkling and funny and breathtaking like a punch in the chest. i have endearing love for a woman who admires her lesbian sisters-in-law and does her best to support her soft-spoken husband. i laughed so hard at the adolescent impulsivity and shitheadedness of kids who threw a burning baby doll over the peace wall. i can't stop thinking about the boy who chooses to believe his blind friend when he says he's been healed and wants to learn to drive, and the girl who spends all summer working for a space of her own and is denied by a father who must be recontextualized in that moment between childhood and growing up. what a treasure trove of jewels.

the deets

how i read it: another e-galley from NetGalley, i'm still playing catch-up! but i'm definitely going to buy this one when i have the chance.

try this if you: are delighted by dialects written out, are into surreality, enjoy stellar and quick character development, or dig getting dropped into the day-to-day culture of a place.

some lines i really liked: gosh the prose is just so beautiful

At high tide the seaweed swims with me. Its smooth tongues lap my arms and legs. I think about Jonah in the belly of the whale, all those slick intestines sliding against his skin. I feel small in myself and held.

___

In a way, it's good to be kept busy. It wears the howl out of her. She wonders if it is the same for Dad. By the day's end, there's no talk left in either of them.

___

After Rob, I lost the sea. I let Malcolm have it. I did not want it anymore.

___

The pair of them are always getting on like this. Smiling. Touching. Kissing each other in unusual places such as shoulders and earlobes. They are stupid happy. I wouldn't want to be a lesbian myself, but I envy Cathy all the same.

___

You start being honest with each other, and it's like opening what's-her-name's box. You never know what'll come slinking out.

“In this city we have a great love of the talking. The talking can be practised on buses, park benches, from pulpits and frequently on gable walls. it swells in the presence of an audience, though a second party is not strictly required.” 

Along with ‘Multitudes’ this the second book I’ve read this year that features my home turf: East Belfast. I read this in July while the air burned hot and the humid air clung to my hair. When the bonfires were lit, I had Carson’s book in my hand. 

Firestarters is set in 2018 in Belfast. And the city is burning. Tall fires are going up all over the city, large bonfires that destroy buildings, department stores and houses alike. Nobody knows who’s doing it. The only thing the police do know is that a mysterious online entity is orchestrating the whole thing. Masked and dressed in black, the mysterious person is riling up the masses and egging his followers on. 

One man, an East Belfast man named Sammy, thinks he knows who the mysterious online figure is: his son. 

On the same side of town, Dr Johnathan Murray has been taken in by a siren. (Yes, you read that right. An actual siren.) While doing the rounds on a night shift, Johnathan is lured to an apartment and drawn into bed with the mysterious creature. It binds him for months, falls pregnant and disappears. Johnathan is left with the child. 

Sammy and Jonathan’s stories are strong and distinct, so much so that this feels like two books meshed into one. Both plots exist together because both men are grappling with the same thing: they are afraid of their own child. Sammy, an ex loyalist paramilitary thug, is scared of his son Mark. He fears that the behaviour of his past has tainted his son and touched him like curse. Jonathan fears that his daughter will grow up to have a hold over him. He worries that she will manipulate people and control others. He ponders, in his darkest moments, cutting out her little tongue. 

This book is full of magical realism. Through his daughter, Jonathan discovers the “unfortunate children of Belfast.” Children born with strange, bizarre abilities.  There’s the girl with wings, the girl who can turn into a boat and a boy who can see the future in every liquid. 

Sammy and Jonathan have the same fear but they live in different worlds. Sammy is working class. Jonathan, middle class. They live five minutes away from one another in the same part of the city. Firestarters brilliantly illustrates the class divide in East Belfast and the invisible line that runs between the Upper and Lower Newtownards Road. Jonathan is completely ignorant of his working class neighbours and the hidden world of the unfortunate children. 

“And why did I never hear about any of this before Sophie?” 

“Cos-no harm intended-Doctor, you’re too posh to have known what was going on at the other end of the road.”

I think there’s a reason why Carson sets her story in post Good Friday Agreement Belfast. Firestarters is about the legacy we leave to our children. It’s about a younger generation that looks back at the past and sees glory instead of pain. 

“They talk of the loud violence their parents knew, as if it is a kind of birthright denied to them.”

Dear dear,

I changed up the title, did you see? Anyhow. Today was not as bad as yesterday. Although I wanted to write a little story about a tumbleweed who got caught up in a fence I started a small dialogue between me and my best friend, where we are working adults, dealing with adult problems and adulting every day.

I tried to make it fun and create an actual protagonist out of myself but I don't think I am worthy of being amazing on “electronic paper” if I am not my own ultimate protagonist in real life. 

How can I become one? 

I have to find the good in every bad, happiness in sadness, progression in taking a step back. I have to concentrate on myself instead of others. My friend suggested: “Don’t compare your problems to others’.” She is right. My problems might not be as bad as yours and I am terribly sorry that you have to experience them but for me, finding me after losing myself is my worst problem I have to solve.

It might not be the best idea but I am:

- writing everyday, something little. sometimes meaningless

- listening to music, I went back to classics like Bach and Schubert. 

- working, tutoring kids.

- talking to friends, though sometimes they don’t answer for hours and that when the dark thoughts attack me.

Few and Far Between: A Novel

I didn’t really know what to expect from this book but the synopsis sounded amazing. I’m delighted that I was approved for it because I literally couldn’t put it down until it was done.

It’s 1993 in Ballylack, Northern Ireland and 10-year-old Hannah Adger is looking forward to the summer holidays. But then her classmates start to fall ill and before anyone knows what’s happening, they start dying. No one knows what this strange plague is or how it arrived in Ballylack but it seems that Hannah has avoided it. Racked with guilt as to why, Hannah plunges into crippling loneliness and confusion as the community pulls together to solve the mystery and stop the children from dying.

Hannah is raised in a time and place where girls aren’t expected to have high-flying careers or to be intelligent. She and her family are ultra-religious and her views are completely influenced by what the church teaches her. Of course, I wanted to tell her that she was destined for things much bigger than Christianity would ever allow her to think about. At first, her parents’ devoutness seems to be what saves her and there is a whiff of holiness that seems to linger around Hannah. This gave the whole novel an allegorical vibe and it meant I was making connections to Biblical material all over the place.

There is some reference of what was going on in Northern Ireland in the 90s but it’s through Hannah’s eyes. Therefore, we get an view that is full of innocence and a unique take on terrorism that only a sheltered child could have. It endeared me to her even more and I couldn’t help but put all my hope into her being OK.

There is also mention of the racism and xenophobia in a small Irish village in 1993. Maganda is a Filipina woman who has married an Irish man and settled in Ballylack. Her son Ben is actually called Bayani but like many things, his name has been forced to fit in with their community. The theme of othering and the treatment of migrants is touched upon at multiple points in the narrative and it says a lot about the hostile nature and rigid attitudes of Ballylack. It’s almost as if an ugly plague has been there for years and a physical manifestation of it is long overdue.

There is some discussion of class issues too. Hannah is just a child but she is well aware of the class system within Northern Ireland. When a rich city kid wins the essay competition themed around the future of Ireland, she realises that the circumstances that she was born into already mean the odds are stacked against her. It’s a heartbreaking thought that kids as young as she is have very little hope for their lives but sadly, we know that this is a reality amongst working class children.

Despite its very bleak content, The Raptures does have its moments of humour. Any book that is largely told through the eyes of a child is bound to make an adult reader laugh sometimes and Hannah did that for me. It was a really lovely experience to watch her grapple with the idiosyncrasies of her faith and question the so-called ‘rules’. These lighter parts were very much needed in a book that is largely about mass child death.

As her classmates die, their spirits visit Hannah and she gets to talk to each of them one last time. They all seem to have aged a few years and have come to a few realisations of their own. It’s almost as if death is a gateway to a kind of adulthood for them and it has given them some wisdom. Through them, Hannah learns that even in the afterlife, there is still conflict and division. Perhaps wherever there is an essence of human thought, those things will always be unavoidable. 

Magical Mystery Tour | Bernard Knowles / The Beatles | 1967