Jan Carson is a writer from Northern Ireland, currently living in Belfast. She published several collections of short stories and three novels before The Raptures, which was published in 2022. Her next novel, Few And Far Between will be published shortly.
The Raptures is set in rural Northern Ireland, in a village called Ballylack. Set in 1993, against the background of what we in Northern Ireland called the Troubles, the story revolves around eleven year old Hannah Adger. Her classmates begin to die, one by one, so the hunt begins for the source of the mysterious illness which is killing them,
Ballylack is a village populated only by Protestants - apart from the family who run the Chinese takeaway - which means this could be any one of many such villages in Northern Ireland.
As I was brought up near a village like this, I feel that I know these people - so perhaps I can't be as objective as I should be in my assessment of the novel.
My youth may have been thirty years earlier, but little changed in the Northern Irish countryside between 1963 and 1993 - apart from the Troubles beginning in 1969. Even now, over thirty years after the setting of the book, many ingrained attitudes haven't changed, as change comes slowly to stubborn Ulster Protestants.
It's my familiarity with the setting of the story which makes me biased in assessing the novel, so I'd love to hear from a reader who isn't from Northern Ireland. As I want someone else to read the book I deliberately haven't mentioned much about how the story progresses.
From my perspective I enjoyed the story and would definitely recommend it...so, if you haven't read The Raptures, please read it and let me have your opinion!
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