Quickly, While They Still Have Horses

‘Jan Carson is a born storyteller: her work is so imaginative, whimsical, mischievous and brave, but tender and curious too — you never know where she's going to take you next, so reading her is always an adventure. Exactly how it should be.’ LISA MCINERNEY, author of THE GLORIOUS HERESIES ------ In sixteen sparkling stories, Jan Carson introduces us to worlds and characters that feel real enough to touch. All of life is here: the thrill of growing up, the grief when youth is over; first love, mature love, parenthood and loss - all shot through with profound compassion, warm wit, and boundless imagination. In 'A Certain Degree of Ownership', a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously towards the sea. In 'Troubling the Water', a rumour spreads at a public swimming pool and chaos ensues. In 'Fair Play' a dishevelled father loses his two sons in an adventure park. Every so often, an irresistible suggestion of the other world will surprise and delight, reaffirming Carson as a thrillingly original and audacious talent, and making Quickly, While They Still Have Horses the perfect introduction for readers new to her work.

About the Author :
Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a short-story collection, Children's Children (2016), and two flash fiction anthologies, Postcard Stories (2017) and Postcard Stories 2 (2020). Her second novel, The Fire Starters (2019), won the EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award and her third novel, The Raptures (2022) was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her most recent short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses, was published in 2024. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She has won the Harper's Bazaar short-story competition and has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, the An Post Irish Short Story of the Year, and the Sean Faolain Short Story Prize.

Review :
Jan Carson is a born storyteller: her work is so imaginative, whimsical, mischievous and brave, but tender and curious too — you never know where she's going to take you next, so reading her is always an adventure. Exactly how it should be. These stories are pure magic, funny, sharp, heartbreaking, the short form at its absolute best. Jan Carson is a unique and very special writer, one of the greatest of the modern fabulists. Story after story glints with the strange, hard magic of the North – a seam that Jan Carson has opened in her previous books and mines here to perfection. From soft-plays that swallow children to static caravans where girls are sent ahead of marriage, babies that float down the river in biscuit tins and the pruch for sale at garden centres, this is a Northern Ireland at once uncanny and familiar, ancient and modern, and a set of stories only Jan could have written. I adored them. Jan Carson's stories are by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming - but always surprising. Quickly, While They Still Have Horses is a delight to read! Jan Carson is one of the most original voices I’ve read in years. Her stories are fleet-footed and cunning and funny. They dare to look closely at what lurks beneath the quotidian surface of things, even if what is revealed will make you gasp. I am truly in awe of this collection. What an enormous pleasure it is to read Jan Carson. Each short story is masterful, brilliantly inventive and moving. Every page reveals the mark of an extraordinary original and gifted writer. Jan Carson is an essential voice from the island of Ireland—an island that holds a wider variety of stories than can be accommodated within strict realism or naturalism. With great skill, assurance, and a tentacular imagination, and by getting the details right, Carson conveys highly complex subjectivities with powerful simplicity. There's something of the fable about each of these stories—troubling, timeless, wistful and wise. Utterly captivating . . . [Jan Carson's] gift for language sings on every page . . . Fiercely beautiful writing laced with tenderness and wit, that at its heart speaks to the complexity and emotional temperature of a modern Northern Ireland, real and imagined, without losing sight of the past. Carson is a tremendously gifted writer and a master of the short story . . . Everyone should read it. Short stories are difficult to make truly compelling but in Quickly, While They Still Have Horses, author Jan Carson does this effortlessly ... Her best yet. [Jan Carson] is most definitely a free-thinking, trailblazing writer of well-observed, quirkily humorous fiction... This book is a wild but somehow, totally grounded read. Superb.