Children's Children

"Everything leaves marks, even water...". Two children watching their parents argue inside a greenhouse, an armoured boy and his troubled sister, a human statue who's lost the ability to move and a floating six-year-old tethered to the backyard fence : the characters in Jan Carson's debut short-story collection are all falling apart in their own peculiar ways. Absurdist, allegorical and disturbingly convincing, these characters are wrongdoers and victims of wrongdoing.
They are people marked by life yet struggling to forge some kind of future. Mixing Carson's distinctive magical-realist voice with a more traditional brand of Irish literary fiction, Children's Children explores the concept of legacy and the influence of one'generation upon the next. These darkly humorous stories are heartbreaking, hopeful and gently critical of post-conflict Northern Ireland.