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Few and Far Between
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By: Jan Carson
Publisher: Scribner
Published: July 2026
Pages: 336
Categories: Fiction
Language: English
Available as: Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audio
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9781529936766
ISBN: 1529936756
ASIN: 1529936756

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 “stunning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) 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.

Review

Washington Independent Review: https://shorturl.at/xj7p4

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