by Jay Rafferty
This week I had the pleasure of reading The Last Resort, Jan Carson’s most recent publication (that is, before the fast-approaching release of The Raptures in January 2022), a collection of 10 character driven vignettes which center around a holiday park on the Northern Irish coast. This slim, signed novella has sat on my bedside table under a collection of poems by Pablo Neruda since I picked it up at the John Hewitt International Summer School a few months ago. Although not a subject I would normally relish (I went caravanning once in Scotland and swore never again) I figured it was about damn time I gave Jan’s work the attention it deserves.
In my opinion Jan Carson is one of, if not the most consistently prolific Northern Irish writer alive today. Certainly, the most popular anyway. Carson’s constant literary and artistic outpouring over the past decade is enough to make even Stephen King say “wow that’s a lot.” Unlike King however there is no hit or miss element in her work’s quality.
From the opening pages of The Last Resort I was brought back to my childhood half-term breaks spent in drizzle at the seaside (albeit I was in Bundoran not Ballycastle). My mother still need only think the word “picnic” to bring on a flood. Carson captures that reality to a tee in these stories, from the dodgy waterproof coats to the grey-speckled retiree caravanners, AKA: “the desperate and depraved who’d spend February in a caravan.” A warning to those who are unfamiliar with Ulster speech patterns and colloquial dialogue, you may find yourself slightly confused by some of the lingo like the Lithuanian character Vidas is but trust me, we do genuinely talk like that. For me it’s the mundane insanity and internal monologues that sell Carson’s characters, which is where her work truly shines. Sure, a mystery runs throughout these stories but the characters are the heart of The Last Resort.
Northern Ireland and mental antics are a bit like New York and rats, you’re never more than 6 feet away from them. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic or Protestant, we’re all a bit doolally here. Take for instance the irony in Frankie, a blind man who wants the bench that is dedicated to his dead daughter’s memory put up on a cliff overlooking the sea…for the view. There’s Malcom, the alcoholic telekineticist that’s lost his gift, wee Alma who will undoubtedly one day run or be the focus of a True Crime podcast, Richard who measures square-footage in size nine shoes, and Anna whose mother-issues make Carrie look well rounded. I know these people! I know their everyday off-kilter reasoning, their matter-of-factness, their innate insanity that I can’t help but feel sentimental about. To make the comparison once more, what Stephen King does for Horror, Jan Carson does for the Northern Irish.
The Last Resort is high-quality prose from a high-quality person. It’s books like this that pay credence to the words of the playwright Brendan Behan:
“Other people have a nationality. The Irish…have a psychosis.”
Jay Rafferty is an uncle, a redhead and an eejit. He’s the Social Media Manager for Sage Cigarettes Magazine and a Best of the Net Nominee. You read his poems in several journals including Lights on the Horizon and Daily Drunk Mag. When not playing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff. You can follow him on Twitter @Atlas_Snow.
