“It’s the last day of June in Ballylack. The summer holidays have just begun. At ten past ten — evening, not morning — the first child dies.”

Rachel Carson’s fourth novel, “The Raptures”, takes place in a small town in Northern Ireland where it is 1993 and Hannah Adger has just turned 11. She is the only child from an evangelical, charismatic family, in a Protestant village.

The summer holidays have just begun when the children in Hannah’s class begin to sicken and die. They then return to haunt Hannah.

Carson writes about intergenerational relationships, the desire to belong, the importance of maintaining one’s individuality, the trauma wreaked by religious fundamentalism and the problems which seethe beneath the surfaces of small communities.

Set during the Troubles, Carson uses “The Raptures” to evoke the conflicts, fears and limitations of 1990s Northern Ireland. The novel shines a light on the complicated nature of people with different beliefs living side by side.

Jan Carson’s most recent novel is original, terrifying, witty and darkly funny.

About the author

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. Her first novel, “Malcolm Orange Disappears”, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a short-story collection, “Children's Children” (2016), and two flash fiction anthologies, “Postcard Stories” (2017) and “Postcard Stories 2” (2020). Her second novel, “The Fire Starters” (2019), won the EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She has won the Harper's Bazaar short-story competition and has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. She specializes in running arts projects and events with older people, especially those living with dementia.

A huge thanks to @netgalley, the publisher @transworld @randomhouseuk and the author for an advance reader copy of this book.

This is my second Jan Carson book. I read and enjoyed The Last Resort last year and when I read the blurb for this one - a coming of age novel about a mysterious plague affecting children in 1990s Northern Ireland - I was intrigued to read it despite its seemingly heavy content.

There is a certain charm to this book but something about it didn’t quite work for me - it almost works, it comes very close but too many of the elements are just slightly off.

Hannah is an eleven year old girl in Ballylack, a small rural community in Northern Ireland. She has always been somewhat of an outcast, being the child of strict evangelical Protestant parents who believe they can pray their way out of any situation. Hannah has just finished primary school when suddenly the children in her class begin to die of a mysterious illness, one by one.

We get the story from Hannah’s first person perspective, third person perspective and from others’ third person perspective. The way in which the narrative jumps around makes it difficult to connect with the characters. Through the jumpy narration we discover that there are issues of racism, discrimination, child neglect and religious extremism in the community but we never really scratch the surface.

The plot itself is repetitive, to the point where this reader became inured to the death of children - that sounds heartless but the way in which it’s done left me largely unaffected.

The story does feel as though there’s a strong moral coming through, but it’s hard to put your finger on what exactly that moral is. Is it a criticism of religious extremism or an endorsement of it? An “each to their own” message?

I felt more could have been made of the role of religion in the community - instead the focus was mainly on Hannah’s family’s religious fervour with a nod to the Orange marches. The repeated mention of the ritualistic praying over Hannah by “the believers” was odd and became annoying after a while. The Troubles is a constant through the book as a backdrop, and I felt perhaps it was too subtle; more could have been made of the link between the cause of the plague and the conflict.

Finally, there’s a thread of magical realism running through the story that is Carson’s signature style. It didn’t work for me on this occasion as it didn’t really go anywhere and again left me bewildered as to the point of it. Was there a moral there? It didn’t really serve as a plot point.

I know others have loved it. Marian Keyes gave it a rave review in the Irish Times at the weekend. It just fell short for me. Its offbeat charm reminded me of a book I read last year - What You Can See From Here by Mariana Leky - but it lacked the spark that one had 😕. 2.5-3/5 ⭐️

*Many thanks to @netgalley, the publisher @transworld @randomhouseuk and the author for an advance reader copy of this book which was published on 6 January. As always, this is an honest review.*

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.

The Raptures is a wonderful time capsule of a novel. Of course, the fact that a deadly plague is at its centre may mean that it’s a little too soon for some people to pick up right away. However, Carson has done an amazing job of writing a believable, loveable child protagonist and conjured up a vivid picture of Ballylack during a time of political turbulence. It’s a heartwrenching page-turner that may well have you howling and screaming!

The backdrop to the story is this - a number of children with from a small village called Ballylack in the North of Ireland begin to fall gravely ill, and no one knows why. It takes place in 1993 at the start of the summer holidays, and eight weeks before Hannah and her classmates move on to the ‘Big school.’ Hannah watches her friends get sick but she seems to stay healthy. Tempers fray in the village as outsiders descend and a frantic search for the cause begins, with secrets uncovered and beliefs challenged.

It’s pointless to try and pigeonhole this novel, and it’s really refreshing to read a book that is so many things. There’s the story itself, a bit of a mystery as they search for the cause. There’s a huge religious element to the book, with various levels of faith and belief represented, with it’s limitations and comforts. It is dark but also hilarious, especially on some of the over the top (to me) elements of religion - at one stage, during a particular fervent prayer session at a hospital beside, a character has to go to the toilet but the chanting continues because ‘Healing can happen at any time. Anywhere. At any time. Even when the subject’s wandered off.’

I also enjoyed the exploring of the relationships between fathers and sons, especially those from a rural background, and the differing roles of mothers and fathers. It also looks at how ‘outsiders’ feel in a tightly knitted community, as well as orange traditions such as Marching and the twelfth. And of course the book takes place in the nineties, with the north still in the midst of ‘the troubles’ so there’s conflict and trauma.

I loved the language in the book - it’s been a while since I heard phrases such as ‘Boys a dear’ which I remember my Grandfather saying. Speaking of which, the Granda in this book was probably my favourite character, world weary but level headed. He doesn’t suffer fools and instinctively understands what Hannah needs.

It is a dark topic, and the momments of hilarity certainly season the book and lighten the mood. I found the stories of each of the children and their families particularly moving. So much of this book felt familiar to me, such as rural villages, townlands, trees with bits of material tied to them and holy wells - Jan Carson does an amazing job of showing the parochialism of ‘this here place’ and how deep rooted faith and belief is.

But of course Hannah is the star. Carson makes her completely real, and I really felt I was listening to her innermost thoughts, so terse, at times funny, then turning to anguish. The story is wonderfully paced, the writing is vivid and inventive and crystal clear. I literally just disappeared into this book every time I lifted it. It’s obviously very close to Jan’s heart and you can tell she has put everything into this, very much a labour of love it seemed to me.

(This is part of a longer review from my book review site - link attached.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday for the ARC

Throughout my reading of this book I found myself puzzling as to who I would recommend this to, and what it is actually about. The plot is straightforward, and a little repetitive, but there is so much more to it that will probably stick with readers. I haven't read anything by Carson before, so don't know how it compares to her previous work, but it certainly has a lot to recommend it.

The plot centres on the small village of Ballylack in the early 1990s. This dated it rather, particularly as so much of what was happening in the book seemed to resonate with our current experiences of living through a pandemic, but the reactions of characters to what was happening are not date-dependant. We start with a young boy, Ross, succumbing to a mystery illness. He dies and, slowly, others in his class show similar symptoms. One by one, others in his class die and the impact this has on the village and surrounding community is evident. Desperate for answers, we watch as a small community tries to find answers.

Our primary focus is the character of Hannah, one of Ross's classmates who has always felt like an outsider due to her father's religious beliefs. Shunned by her classmates, Hannah wonders why she does not appear to be suffering any of the symptoms shown by her peers. Her family try to keep the news of her apparent immunity from her, but Hannah is keeping her own secrets...she can see the dead children and is having conversations with them about how their lives have changed now they are on the other side.

While the nature of the story unravelling is repetitive, I was taken aback by the emotional impact these events had on the families. Each reacted in the way that made sense to them, and this was certainly something that will strike a chord.

The rapture is a theological belief held by some (particularly more evangelical Christians) that supports the view that all believers will, at the end of the world, rise up and be taken to meet Christ. Religious beliefs certainly play a key role in this novel, and I liked the fact that we see a range of attitudes. Hannah's Grandpa Pete was definitely a character who I felt a lot of sympathy with. Determined to support his family he does what he thinks is the right thing, and this causes its own problems, raising concerns and addressing tensions.

Without giving away spoilers, this was a story that had a clear cause and effect. The exact details of this are not revealed until a lot later in the novel, and I was shocked by the dilemma raised. Once we learned the origins of the illness, I felt this was sidelined which surprised me.

I'm grateful to NetGalley for allowing me the chance to read this before publication.

I have been looking forward to reading this for months after seeing glowing reviews from some of my favourite Irish authors. It did not leave me disappointed. This book invites you into a small rural community in Northern Ireland where children are dying of a sudden and mysterious illness. It might not be something that people want to read during a pandemic and I was a little hesitant at first, but after just a few pages I was utterly captivated.

Hannah is ten years old and part of the class of children who are dying. She lives with her strict religious parents and begins to question everything as this epidemic begins. Jan Carson wonderfully creates Hannah’s young voice and her chapters tore me apart at times as she is burdened with things at such a young age. Her sense of guilt over what is happening is utterly heartbreaking and you would love to rush in and tell her she has done nothing wrong. Though we do get other points of view, Hannah’s was the most powerful for me as she dealt with such challenging and overwhelming thoughts and emotions while going through an horrific ordeal.

Carson explores many things within this book, from religion, to small community relations, to family, and much more. I found this book to be very powerful with many nuances to living in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Carson’s writing evokes so many emotions while reading that you become utterly transfixed and end up reading on the edge of your seat due to the tension. This is a brilliant book that will stay with me for a while.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

The novel is seemingly centered around the mysterious illness of children in a Northern Irish village, however it actually is not a fast paced thriller or whodunit but a drama. There's a lot going on in terms of faith, discrimination, child neglect, parenthood and coming-of-age thoughts.

Unfortunately this book created a sense of melancholy within me every time I opened it and started reading. It's full of emotions, the characters are well elaborated, and the entire novel gives you a good idea of what living in rural Northern Ireland was like in the 1990s.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for this Advance Review Copy.

Jan Carson's books normally leave me pondering for days if not weeks after finishing them and The Raptures is similarly going to leave me deep in thought for quite a while.

This is a story which at first glance just revolves around a mysterious illness that has overcome the small northern village of Ballylack, however becomes so much more as Jan delicately looks at the impact religion, politics, superstition and family dynamics can have on everyone from the young innocent child to the community as a whole.

In true Carson style this is done through the lens of belly bursting comedy, mixed with heartbreaking tear-jerking paragraphs intertwined with some moments which will honestly leave the hair on the back of your neck standing for days.

I'm going to be unpicking this one in my brain for a while yet, but that's ok since it will be it that lilting twang that Carson conveys so well within her writing.

I didn't particularly enjoy reading The Raptures, but more than that, I just had no idea what it was trying to do as a novel.

Tonally, The Raptures comes across as very twee, almost didactic. It's a novel that feels like it was written to have a moral, some message that was supposed to be moving and inspiring but that in actuality felt very flat and saccharine. The story doesn't outright try to explicitly articulate a moral, but the feeling that it's supposed to have one is there nevertheless, implied by both the way that the narrative is set up and the way that it concludes.

Then we have the structure of the book, which was a bit all over the place for me. For one, it was hard to tell what kind of perspective The Raptures wanted us to focus on. We get first-person-POV chapters from Hannah's perspective, but we also get third-person-POV chapters from Hannah's perspective--and from other characters--as well as the occasional omniscient third-person narration about the goings-on in the town. It was very confusing to follow sometimes, and it made it hard to really inhabit these characters minds since it was unclear where, exactly, the narration was coming from. I also just really missed some of the beautiful writing that was front and center in Carson's previous novel, The Fire Starters. The best I can say about her writing in this novel is that it was serviceable.

Narratively, The Raptures is supposed to be about the community of Ballylack, the kinds of people who live there, and the various dynamics that they have each other in the wake of an emerging epidemic within their community. The problem with this is that neither Ballylack nor its inhabitants are particularly interesting. The execution of the story never surprises in any way: there's an epidemic that targets children, parents are afraid for their children, parents grieve their children. Beyond that, I didn't feel like I really got a good grasp of what set this community apart in terms of its social environment, its geography, the kinds of lifestyles of its inhabitants, etc. It was all rather flat.

My fundamental problem with The Raptures, though, is that I have no idea what it was trying to do as a novel. The story is straightforward, simplistically so, and it goes pretty much the way you expect it to: there's an epidemic killing children, and so the children proceed to die one by one. With the exception of a few revelations, that's literally the whole plot of the book. And it was so boring. The story has no momentum, nothing to make you want to keep reading, because nothing surprising or interesting ever happens in it. Child #1 dies, then child #2 dies, then child #3 dies, and then--you guessed it--child #4 dies. And of course this is devastating for the characters, but the way the story is set up makes it so that you become increasingly inured to its characters' pain: by the fifth or sixth time you're reading the same set of reactions to the same exact event, you just feel bored more than anything else. On top of all of this, the novel tries to incorporate a magical realism element throughout its narrative--the operative word, here, being tries, because doesn't succeed. Again, I have no idea what the magical realism was supposed to accomplish. Magical realism is supposed to excite you! to shake things up! to unsettle the foundations of what's considered "normal" or "real" in everyday life. The magical realism here, by contrast, is lackluster, perfunctory. It feels like it's there to make the story Quirky rather than to actually enliven the story for any meaningful reason. It's there just to be there--and frankly so are a lot of the elements of this book's narrative.

Needless to say, I found The Raptures to be a largely disappointing read. I really enjoyed Carson's The Fire Starters and was so confident that I'd love this novel as well. Clearly, though, The Raptures was not the book for me. It's one of those books that I just know I'm never going to think about again because it was just so utterly unimpressionable to me as a novel.

Thank you to Penguin Random House UK for providing me with an e-ARC of this novel via NetGalley!

I remember my excitement at discovering a new, deeply original Northern Irish voice when I came across Jan Carson’s last novel, The Fire Starters (which I loved). I can’t deny I approached The Raptures with a degree of trepidation – a part of me was concerned I might be disappointed if this new one didn't measure up. I needn't have worried. The Raptures contains all the great stuff about Carson’s previous novel (memorable characters, a strong sense of place, intriguing use of magic realism, a blend of the tragic and the comic, alongside a nail-biting story), whilst simultaneously inviting the reader into a completely different setting – that of a rural Presbyterian community in 90s Northern Ireland. I've read quite a few books from this neck of the woods in recent years yet this type of community is not a part of Northern Irish culture I’ve often seen represented, let alone with such compassion and truthfulness. You might think ‘children dying of a mysterious illness at the time of the Troubles’ sounds a bit much, but do not let this dark premise put you off. The novel with its terrific cast of characters and Carson’s unique writing style will definitely put a smile on your face and leave you wishing it didn’t have to end.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Set in the fictional Irish town of Ballylack, against the backdrop of the troubles, Hannah Adger is troubled by the alarming deaths of her classmates. A mysterious flu-like illness rages through the town (I wasn’t entirely sure when I started reading if this was a pandemic novel!) via the local gossip network, claiming a number of children from Hannah’s class.

I will admit this is never my favourite theme in a novel, which wasn’t helped by the introduction of the ghosts of various dead classmates (not as dark as it actually sounds). It’s the emphasis on the various religious values of the community and the obsession with instilling apocalyptic fear of god and damnation in the youngens that is so troubling.

Alongside this, Carson highlights the complex relationships between parents and their children. There is a somewhat moralistic tone in the tragedy, as the mysterious illness exposes parental mistakes and uncertainties, for which they pay the ultimate price.

In short, an engaging, original story for the moral maze that is the 21st century.

It's been ages since I shouted at characters as much as I did in this book. I twigged something quite early on and, when something was about to happen, I was screaming at them... Got me in all the feels that did! Phew...
Honestly, that does make sense when you have read the book. In fact, I'm still not quite over it completely even days after finishing. I guess the characters in the book got to me a bit.
So 10 year old Hannah lives with her deeply, strictly religious parents just outside the village the book is set in. Her school is just breaking up for summer holidays and she is looking forward to a few weeks off. Until her classmate, and friend, Ross gets sick, gets worse, and dies. Then another classmate gets sick, and another, and another, all dying quickly and nastily. Hannah is fine though, something her parents believe is more religious than any other reason. And religion is not to be taken lightly as the book is set near Belfast, during the Troubles.
Hannah is a lovely character and the author has managed to get her young voice exactly right as to be both believable and endearing. I just wanted to scoop her up and tell her it'll all be OK. What she goes through in the book really did tug at my heartstrings. I'd love to explain further but spoilers prevent me from doing so but I will just hint at her connection to her classmates not all being physical.
For a book with such a dark story - the death of children - it didn't feel overwhelming. There was just the right amount of well placed, relevant, and revenant humour to be found throughout the book. This kept it on an even keel and prevented it from getting too dark.
I also really got on with the author's style of writing. Her voice, her language, her no nonsense attitude to no superfluous waffle or padding. As well as her sense of humour - a bit on the dark side on occasion. So much so that I now have a whole new bunch of books on my TBR from her back catalogue. I really need more spare time to read...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Magical realism is difficult to pull off. Additionally, it's not a style I enjoy. This book did nothing to dispel my dislike of magical realist writing. Ballylack is a small town in Northern Ireland, that seems hard to escape from. I wanted to read this book because I liked the context-The Troubles from teh perspective of young Protestant children. Hannah Adger feels at odds with the rest of the 11 year olds ,and the town, because her Evangelical Christian parents impose a lot of restrictions on her young life. A mysterious illness starts killing the children in the town, and how the town reacts to this, the religious fissures in their society, forms the rest of the story. The authorial voice is jarring, however-there are instances where it's written in first person narration from the point of view of 11 year old Hannah, in the early 90s, and the author has her say that their teacher asked the to "brainstorm" ideas. I'm nearly 40 in 2021, and even I wouldn't use "brainstorm". I find things like this annoying. I found that the prospect of children dying is treated without the horror this should evoke, and them turning into ghosts who seem to have a lot more freedom is a complete cop-out. I can't quite tell what the author's even trying to say here, and her somehow justifying Hannah's father's many strictures is quite disturbing. It's like the author attempted a pastiche of 'Derry Girls' and Samanta Schweblin's work, and failed at both.
For a moving work on small town disaffection and the difficulty of leaving, read 'The Sopranos' by Alan Warner( also an excellent movie called 'Our Ladies'). For capturing the complications faced by children trying to grow up under the shadow of The Troubles, watch 'Derry Girls' or read Fintan O'Toole's excellent 'We don't know ourselves'. For something that sends up religion ( though Catholic while this book is about Protestants), watch 'Father Ted.'. I really can't recommend this book. 2 stars for intermittently good writing.

Holy moly. This book. It just swanned through the door right at the death and looks set to nab a place on my best of the year…

Our plot: When several children from the same village start succumbing to a mysterious illness, the quest to discover the cause has devastating and extraordinary consequences.

That’s all I’m giving you. Because I didn’t have much more info going into this one, and it was worth it.

Firstly, I wish I had Carson’s writing skills to articulate my feelings about this book. I simply couldn’t put it down. The concept, which should be upsetting and hard to read, is instead enthralling.

Carson explores a rural community and the cultures clashing within that small community when forced to come together to try and save their children. The way she investigates the tension that comes with different religions and beliefs living side by side is just brilliant. And her ability to inject the “tougher” scenes with moments of humour, as a way to balance the dark, well, I was enraptured (no pun intended).

And I haven’t even begun to discuss the important part that Northern Ireland obviously plays in this story. Set during the Troubles, while not directly linked to what was happening at the time, Carson is able to use this story to explore the complicated nature of people with different beliefs living beside each other and the difficulties these communities have in being able to accept one another.

It’s a brilliant book that reminded me once more that I need to read more work by Northern Irish writers. It’s the second year in a row where a novel from a Northern Irish writer will be in my top reads of the year (Milkman by Anna Burns being one in 2020).

Read this book. You won’t regret it.

The Raptures will be published by Doubleday Books UK on 6 Jan 2021. Thanks to them, the author, & NetGalley for an advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Jan Carson’s The Raptures is set in a village near Belfast in the early 1990s. The Good Friday Agreement is still five years away, and hope of a solution to the sectarian conflict which plagues Northern Ireland is dim. Yet, the inhabitants of Ballylack have a more urgent problem on their minds. Several children from the same class start dying of a mysterious illness. The only student who seems to be avoiding the effects of the disease is Hannah, a girl from a born-again Christian background. Already an outsider because of the peculiar hang-ups of her parents, these inexplicable developments only serve to further mark her out, especially when she is visited by the ghosts of her dead classmates, who reveal that they are trapped in an alternative version of Ballylack. We live the extraordinary events of that summer through Hannah’s eyes – the novel opens and ends in the first person, but even those chapters written in the third person are written from her perspective.

Carson’s writing is marked by witty observation, and would be a joy to read, irrespective of the details of the story itself. As a bonus, she comes up with an enjoyably quirky plot; a coming-of-age narrative which mixes elements of comedy and tragedy, human drama and satire, mystery and the supernatural. It is not often that a book has you laughing out loud in one paragraph and shedding a tear in the next, but somehow Carson manages it repeatedly in this novel.

This notwithstanding, there is still something about The Raptures which I cannot get my head around. The speculative aspects of the novel invite an allegorical reading but I’m not sure I got the “message” (if there is, indeed, a specific one). The alternative Ballylack, with the ghosts rapidly ganging up into factions, could be a symbol of the divisions in the adult world. The send-up of Hannah’s happy-clappy Protestant parents (her father in particular) can be read as an indictment of religion, although not necessarily of belief – Grandpa, one of the most positively portrayed characters in the novel, also “prays in his own manner”.

At the end of the book, I was left with the impression that there were hidden layers which I was missing. Even though this might be the case, I still found The Raptures a remarkable reading experience.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-raptures-by-jan-carson.html

The Raptures by Jan Carson is a powerful and highly entertaining story of a clash of cultures in the midst of a small-town tragedy.

The prospect of a number of children dying due to a mysterious affliction is a powerful premise to begin with even before we understand the unique backstory of each child. The tragedy is complicated by the difficult family relationships in this small town. The addition of a few layers of irony and humour results in a book that is a joy to read.

Carson is a highly skilled storyteller using her unique style and devices along with a good dash of humour. This book is a winner!! I expect it will be read widely and enjoyed by readers for many years to come.

The Raptures by Jan Carson

One by one the 10 year old children of one school class in a village in rural Northern Ireland are felled by a deadly illness. The only one who seems to be spared is Hannah from a born again Christian family and always the outsider. As the mystery unfolds there are devastating consequences for the families and the village community.

This book is BRILLIANT - I was gripped from start to finish and the writing is extraordinary. I'm now going to read everything else Jan Carson has written. Her way of describing things is amazing - fabulous writing which can be funny or quietly devastating as the scene requires. I'm going to re-read this book lots as it's a masterclass in writing. And such an interesting premise and subject matter - wow! Very VERY highly recommended - my 78th book of the year and in my top 5 for sure!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

Did I want to read a book about an epidemic killing children of a small town in Ireland in a pandemic? Not partially. Am I glad I did, yes! Jan does a great job of introducing different families, their backgrounds and how they came to live in the town of Ulster. You get to really know every single character. I loved the Irish twangs and the vivid descriptions of the way Religion dominated life in Northern Ireland at the time. For such a serious topic I couldn't believe how many funny moments there were. I did expect a few more supernatural elements- but really enjoyed it overall. Plus the cover is amazing!

Set in a small Ulster village in the ‘90s during the Troubles, Jan Carson’s The Raptures is about a class of 11-year-olds struck down by a fatal illness, one of whom seems to have escaped the fate of the others. The child of evangelical Protestant parents, Hannah has always been an outsider. She’s an engaging child, bright and funny, who has conversations in her head with Jesus, longs to watch the strictly forbidden Coronation Street and loves her Granda Pete. As one-by-one her classmates begin to sicken, each appears to her just before they die, bringing back tales of running wild with the Dead Kids gang. Meanwhile, the media stations itself in Ballylack, morbidly awaiting the next casualty.

Carson weaves a multitude of themes through her story: religion, politics, family childhood, racism, sexism and death are all addressed although never with a heavy hand. There’s a great deal of humour, black and otherwise, much of it provided by Hannah. The insularity of village life is particularly well done, its racism cloaked in politeness, while Granda Pete is a beacon of light shining out for Hannah. And I'm pleased to say it ends on a note of hope.

Given present circumstances I probably shouldn't enjoy tales of mysterious illnesses tearing through communities as much as I do...and yet! Jan Carson's The Raptures is the story of a village afflicted by illness that seems to target its children, and the resulting journey to discover the cause of the disruption. It's a tale of finger pointing, the isolation of being an outsider, and the guilt of being a survivor. As heartbreaking at times as it is funny at others, The Raptures is hugely enjoyable and absolutely a book that you should have on your TBR list, especially if you like your humour as dark as it's possible to come.

Carson has such a natural, easy voice and I'm keen to pick up other works of hers - I think The Fire Starters is going to be next on my list!