Publishers Weekly
05/20/2024
Frustrations large and small beset the Northern Irish characters in Carlson’s dry-witted and appealing fifth collection (after The Raptures). In “A Certain Degree of Ownership,” an unnamed woman encounters a family with a baby on the rarely used public beach she’s come to consider her own. When the baby begins to crawl, unnoticed, into the sea, the narrator thinks, “I do not want the baby to crawl into the sea. But I do not think it is my job to stop the baby crawling into the sea.” “Fair Play” centers on a Londoner staying on his wife’s family’s land in Ulster during the Covid-19 pandemic. He takes his two sons to Bouncy Bob’s, the Belfast equivalent of Chuck E. Cheese, and panics when they disappear in a tube slide and the attendants show no concern (“This place is hungrier than other places,” he thinks. “It will never let go of its own”). Other entries probe the region’s folk magic practices, as in “Tinged,” where a friend of the narrator’s family casts a spell to heal their ailing cow. Some stories end before making the most of their provocative premises, but for the most part Carson holds the reader’s attention with her singular observations and turns of phrase. This is worth a look. (July)
From the Publisher
A collection of 16 darkly comic short stories that move fluidly between decades and genres. . . . Carson's blend of dark humor and unwavering compassion for her characters will appeal to fans of Louise Kennedy and Rebecca Miller.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Oh, the imagination! Oh, the inventiveness! In every zany story. Apparently, there’s a branch on the language tree that belongs entirely to Jan Carson.” —Sidik Fofana, author of Stories From the Tenants Downstairs
“An admirable collection of stories, saturated with acerbic wit and startling empathy.” —Kirkus (starred review)
"These stories are pure magic, funny, sharp, heartbreaking, the short form at its absolute best. Jan Carson is a unique and very special writer, one of the greatest of the modern fabulists." —Donal Ryan, author of The Queen of Dirt Island
"[Jan Carson] is most definitely a free-thinking, trailblazing writer of well-observed, quirkily humorous fiction. . . . This book is a wild but somehow, totally grounded read. Superb." —Sunday Independent
"Vivid, original, and moving. . . . Carson excels in offering an accumulation of detail, deftly painting portraits that convince even as they alarm. . . . Long after the reader has closed the book, these tales linger in the mind." —Irish Times
"Dry-witted and appealing . . . Carson holds the reader’s attention with her singular observations and turns of phrase." —Publishers Weekly
"Effortlessly compelling. . . . Carson's details are so vivid, it's too easy to imagine a place in her world." —IMAGE Magazine
"Blending down-to-earth Ulster realism with surreal and fantastical elements, [Carson brings] a fresh and unexpected atmosphere to what at first appear to be familiar settings and characters." —Ballymena Guardian
"A staggeringly brilliant new collection full of wonderful magical realism and utter, crushing everyday life." —Irish Independent
"Surprising, otherworldly, funny, and heartfelt." —My Weekly
"A voice to cherish; one which continues to weave a bright and colourful thread through the patchwork quilt of modern Irish writing." —RTÉ, Book of the Week
"A sparkling collection from one of the best writers on this island." —Business Post
"Jan Carson is one of the most original voices I’ve read in years. Her stories are fleet-footed and cunning and funny. They dare to look closely at what lurks beneath the quotidian surface of things, even if what is revealed will make you gasp. I am truly in awe of this collection." —Tania James, National Book Award–longlisted author of Loot
"Jan Carson's stories are by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming—but always surprising. Quickly, While They Still Have Horses is a delight to read!" —Eric Nguyen, author of Things We Lost in the Water
"Jan Carson is a born storyteller: her work is so imaginative, whimsical, mischievous and brave, but tender and curious too—you never know where she's going to take you next, so reading her is always an adventure. Exactly how it should be." —Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies
"What an enormous pleasure it is to read Jan Carson. Each short story is masterful, brilliantly inventive, and moving. Every page reveals the mark of an extraordinary, original, and gifted writer." —Karl Geary, author of Juno Loves Legs
"Story after story glints with the strange, hard magic of the North. . . . This is a Northern Ireland at once uncanny and familiar, ancient and modern, and a set of stories only Jan could have written. I adored them." —Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days
"Jan Carson is an essential voice from the island of Ireland—an island that holds a wider variety of stories than can be accommodated within strict realism or naturalism. With great skill, assurance, and a tentacular imagination, and by getting the details right, Carson conveys highly complex subjectivities with powerful simplicity. There's something of the fable about each of these stories—troubling, timeless, wistful and wise." —Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Wild Laughter
"Utterly captivating . . . [Jan Carson's] gift for language sings on every page . . . Fiercely beautiful writing laced with tenderness and wit, that at its heart speaks to the complexity and emotional temperature of a modern Northern Ireland, real and imagined, without losing sight of the past. Carson is a tremendously gifted writer and a master of the short story . . . Everyone should read it." —Olivia Fitzsimons, author of The Quiet Whispers Never Stop
Praise for Jan Carson
“A born storyteller, [Carson’s] narratives are uncontainable, fizzing up out of her pages like soda and vinegar in a bottle.” —The Guardian
“Carson proves herself adept at making the familiar marvellously uncanny ... Carson's writing—bracingly fresh, darkly funny, unwaveringly compassionate—represents such a direction in Northern Irish fiction.” —Irish News
“Her stories move effortlessly from reality to dystopia to surreal vignettes in a style that recalls the up-and-coming American authors Laura van den Berg and Diane Cook.” —Irish Times
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-05-04
In Carson’s fifth collection of short stories, Northern Ireland is a place that protects and punishes in equal turn.
The unnamed protagonist of the title story has finally convinced his Spanish girlfriend, with whom he has a tense, confusing relationship, to visit his native Belfast. She has no interest in meeting his family or seeing the places he frequented growing up or even appeasing him. Carson has set this story in an alternate present in which animals seen as obsolete are culled or sent away; what Paola wants to see is the last horse in Britain. The narrator’s daydreams of how lovely it will be to share his hometown with his partner are quickly squashed after they arrive, but he still at one point feels “the gut-twist relief of belonging somewhere specific.” This feeling—at once soothing and nauseating—is present in each of these 16 stories as their characters confront upsetting or deeply frightening obstacles, some absurd, some starkly mundane. In “Grand So,” a couple struggles to keep their jam business afloat. Granda buys a used car for Granny and their granddaughter Ruth to drive around the province, handing out samples, even though “nobody wants to buy luxury jam. This is Northern Ireland. In the eighties. People have other things on their minds.” Ruth discovers that the ghost of the car’s previous owner—a large chain-smoking man she dubs the Backseat Man—is haunting it. Worse, her family is Protestant, and this man is clearly “the other sort of ghost.” “Caravan,” another standout, is told from the point of view of a young girl. Caroline is 10, “almost a grown-up,” and tired of kiddie stuff. Her father promises that if she can fix up the old caravan she and her sister play house in every summer, she can have it as her very own grown-up room. This story’s strengths are in its subtleties, especially its framing of the ways in which the vibrancy of girlhood can lurch, all of a sudden, into the bleak logic of adulthood.
An admirable collection of stories, saturated with acerbic wit and startling empathy.
