Jan Carson, novelist, interview: ‘If I’d been chucked off the deep end right at the start, I’d be terrified’

Jan Carson’s seventh book, The Raptures, a novel set in a small Protestant community in Northern Ireland, is the one she’s always wanted to write. She talks to Niamh Donnelly about the gradual process of becoming a writer, a religious upbringing and the pressures we put on young people to fix problems they didn’t create in the first place

Jan Carson: ‘I think it’s kind of unhealthy to expect a writer to be the best they can be with the first thing. It’s a slow learning process and I’d hope to be getting better with every book until I stopped writing.’ Picture: Jess Lowe

In a small Northern Irish village in 1993, a child develops an illness. He’s prone to such things – always poorly. When he dies, it’s a tragedy, but the townspeople are so used to his maladies, it’s no big surprise. Besides, with the Troubles raging on, death feels dolefully commonplace. But then another child grows ill, and another. Now his death can’t be chalked down to glandular fever, or any ordinary ailment. Something’s afoot in ...