Book review: Ark offers no salvation in the North’s troubled waters

Jan Carson's 'Few and far Between' is a complex story about trauma and how we escape it

Author Jan Carson's dark humour is impeccably judged in 'Few and Far Between'. Picture: Kelvin Boyes/ Press Eye

• Few and Far Between
• Jan Carson
• Doubleday, €15.99

Few and Far Between sees Jan Carson, in perhaps her most accomplished and ambitious work to date, combine a retelling of the history of the troubles with an alternate reality in which Lough Neagh is partly drained in the late 1960s to bring an inhabitable archipelago above the waterline.

These strange islands, referred to by all as “the Ark”, provide refuge for those seeking to avoid the North’s escalating violence, for people in mixed marriages or for the many, like trans woman Sandra, who simply don’t fit in on the “mainland”.

The book seemingly owes its existence to Carson’s discovery of Terence O’Neill’s actual plans to drain Lough Neagh and create a new seventh county in Northern Ireland. 

This vision of a utopian, economically prosperous County Neagh never came to pass but in Few and Far Between, the project is started, then swiftly abandoned at the outbreak of The Troubles. 

However, just enough water has been removed to reveal the magical series of islands.

Much of plot revolves around the character of RJ Connolly. A larger than life, charismatic, abusive narcissist, RJ leaves his job as an anthropologist at Queen’s University and moves his family to the Ark, quickly becoming a sort of high priest to the eclectic community seeking refuge there.

Worshipped by those who don’t know him well, RJ is a bad husband and a worse father. 

We meet his children, Marion and Robert-John, in late middle age with both RJ and their mother, Ursula, long dead. 

They are amongst a handful of people still clinging to life on the Ark, most of the other inhabitants having left after the peace process made the North safe for them again.

Marion and Robert-John are terrified of change but change is coming whether they like it or not. 

Lough Neagh is having the life choked out of it by ever-expanding green algae, killing its wildlife and threatening the region with ecological catastrophe. 

The government plans to re-flood the lake and restore the natural order of things. The Ark, having outlived its usefulness, is about to be drowned.

The islanders’ last, deluded hope comes in the form of Alex, an anthropologist from Queen’s who is writing a book on the Ark’s history. 

This book, they hope, will persuade the outside world that the Ark needs to be preserved. 

So, they welcome her into their lives and homes when she comes to stay with them for a week of research. What follows is an enthralling story, expertly told.

The archipelago’s darkly mysterious islands are crafted in aching detail.

Highlights include an island that swallows anything dumped on it — garbage, computers, weapons (especially handy for a society with secrets to bury in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement). 

There’s a suicide island that Marion patrols daily and an island inhabited by the “almost-deads” — zombie-like figures who have experienced some form of catastrophe such as a car accident but whose bodies temporarily reside elsewhere, waiting to be reunited in death.

This is a complex story about trauma and how we escape it. Individuals such as Robert-John are desperately attempting to outrun bad childhood experiences while whole communities try to exorcise the ghosts of Northern Ireland’s past, though some are clearly trying harder than others.

Each character is superbly drawn, dialogue and inner monologues are never less than perfect and the timing of Carson’s dark humour is impeccably judged. 

In short, everything about Few and Far Between is magnificent. It’s hard to imagine we’ll see a better novel this year.