Quickly, While They Still Have Horses
Stories
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A surreal and darkly comic collection of stories that offer a fresh and irreverent look at life in contemporary Northern Ireland from “one of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation” (The Sunday Times, London).
Humorous and horrifying, tender and absurd, the stories in Quickly, While They Still Have Horses offer a fresh, irreverent look at life in post-conflict Northern Ireland. From first loves to strained relationships, the thrills and terrors of growing up to the dangers and challenges of parenthood, Carson infuses all her stories with empathy, dark wit, and a surreal edge.
In “A Certain Degree of Ownership,” a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously toward the sea. In “Grand So,” the ghost of a car’s previous owner haunts the backseat. In “Troubling the Water,” a rumor of miraculous healing creates chaos at a public swimming pool. Carson never fails to shock and delight as kids go missing in jungle gyms, a baby washes up on a riverbank in a biscuit tin, and a bloody hand appears (and reappears) in a refrigerator. Every so often, these stories travel into alternate versions of our world where pillars of fire are a new treatment for mental illness and animals deemed nonessential are going extinct by legislative orders.
While the legacy of the Troubles is never far from Carson’s mind, it is only a backdrop to the worlds she’s woven in these stories, driven by characters who feel real enough to touch. This stunning collection marks the arrival of a “bracingly fresh, darkly funny, [and] unwaveringly compassionate” (The Irish News) writer to North American readers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
