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Overview
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by LitHub, The Millions, and Our Culture From a "deeply talented" (The New York Times Book Review), award-winning writer comes an alternate history of Northern Ireland's recent past where the last remaining residents of a haunted archipelago face imminent eviction from their home. In 1958, a politician's ludicrous proposal to create a seventh county for Northern Ireland by draining Lough Neagh--the largest lake in Ireland--was, quite understandably, never implemented. In Few and Far Between, Jan Carson imagines a timeline in which the scheme proceeded. When an archipelago emerges from the receding water, a utopian community establishes itself on the islands, hoping to escape the prejudices and dangers of Troubles-era Northern Ireland. As children in the 1970s, Marion and Robert-John Connolly moved to "The Ark" with their mercurial father, a prominent anthropologist studying this unique community. When the novel opens in 2017, the siblings are among the final few inhabitants. Sheltered from modernity, they work as the Ark's caretakers, monitoring the mysterious Far Side islands where ghostly figures linger and the land swallows secrets whole. A devastating algae outbreak is slowly destroying the landscape they love, but government plans to deal with the crisis by flooding the lough would force them back to the Mainland for the first time in fifty years. When a young anthropologist arrives for field research, the Connollys wonder if this ambitious academic might be the answer to all their problems. Can they keep the Ark from revealing too much of its past? Written with dark humor and a distinctive Northern voice, Few and Far Between is a novel about family and memory, toxic masculinity and modern womanhood, and the legacy of trauma that offers an illuminating look into the history of a complex place.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781668056639
- ISBN-10: 1668056631
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company
- Publish Date: July 2026
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.05 pounds
- Page Count: 336
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Jan Carson works a peculiar magic in her inventive novel, Few and Far Between. Imagining an alternate narrative for Northern Ireland during and after the “troubles” in the latter half of the 20th century, she homes in on the emotional truths of a country shaped by years of hatred, violence and imbalance. The well-plotted story gains gravitas from this sweep of history, but draws its haunting strength from its characters.
The germ of the novel was a real-life government scheme that was never implemented: a proposal to drain Lough Neagh, Ireland’s largest lake, to provide new land for farming and housing. Carson’s fictional scenario hinges on a version of this plan, where the water in the lake has been partially lowered, exposing an archipelago of islands dubbed “the Ark.” In the 1970s, a ragtag community of shunned outliers populates the Ark, which becomes a refuge for those in interfaith marriages, LGBTQ+ people and anyone fleeing the violence of the mainland. Anthropologist RJ Connolly is sent there with his family to study the seemingly utopian community, and soon becomes its unofficial leader.
Few and Far Between opens nearly 50 years later. Peace has ostensibly returned to the mainland, the wider world has grown more tolerant, and most residents have abandoned the Ark. There’s been long-term environmental damage to the lake, and a proposed solution is to raise the water level, resubmerging the islands. Alex, a young anthropologist who lived on the Ark as a child and still reveres the now-deceased RJ, arrives to research the history of the place before it disappears. She reconnects with two of the Ark’s last inhabitants: RJ’s grown offspring, Marion and Robert-John, who are holding on as idiosyncratic caretakers of the past. Their family’s past was nothing like the official story, however, and a reckoning is at hand.
Carson introduces otherworldly elements that, on first encounter, muddle the largely realistic narrative: a limbo-like island inhabited by “Almost-Deads,” another where comatose “Sleepers” are warehoused by the state, and a dumping ground that seems to literally eat the detritus of all and sundry. By novel’s end it all coheres, though, and feels appropriately Irish, for even in contemporary Ireland the ordinary and the mystical can coexist, and the past is ever-present. Perhaps nowhere is this truer, Carson seems to say in this masterful novel, than in the time-scarred North.
Jan Carson works a peculiar magic in her inventive novel, Few and Far Between. Imagining an alternate narrative for Northern Ireland during and after the “troubles” in the latter half of the 20th century, she homes in on the emotional truths of a country shaped by years of hatred, violence and imbalance. The well-plotted story gains gravitas from this sweep of history, but draws its haunting strength from its characters.
The germ of the novel was a real-life government scheme that was never implemented: a proposal to drain Lough Neagh, Ireland’s largest lake, to provide new land for farming and housing. Carson’s fictional scenario hinges on a version of this plan, where the water in the lake has been partially lowered, exposing an archipelago of islands dubbed “the Ark.” In the 1970s, a ragtag community of shunned outliers populates the Ark, which becomes a refuge for those in interfaith marriages, LGBTQ+ people and anyone fleeing the violence of the mainland. Anthropologist RJ Connolly is sent there with his family to study the seemingly utopian community, and soon becomes its unofficial leader.
Few and Far Between opens nearly 50 years later. Peace has ostensibly returned to the mainland, the wider world has grown more tolerant, and most residents have abandoned the Ark. There’s been long-term environmental damage to the lake, and a proposed solution is to raise the water level, resubmerging the islands. Alex, a young anthropologist who lived on the Ark as a child and still reveres the now-deceased RJ, arrives to research the history of the place before it disappears. She reconnects with two of the Ark’s last inhabitants: RJ’s grown offspring, Marion and Robert-John, who are holding on as idiosyncratic caretakers of the past. Their family’s past was nothing like the official story, however, and a reckoning is at hand.
Carson introduces otherworldly elements that, on first encounter, muddle the largely realistic narrative: a limbo-like island inhabited by “Almost-Deads,” another where comatose “Sleepers” are warehoused by the state, and a dumping ground that seems to literally eat the detritus of all and sundry. By novel’s end it all coheres, though, and feels appropriately Irish, for even in contemporary Ireland the ordinary and the mystical can coexist, and the past is ever-present. Perhaps nowhere is this truer, Carson seems to say in this masterful novel, than in the time-scarred North.