Children's Children
Short Stories by the Winner of the EU Prize for Literature
Published on 30. January 2025
240 pages
978-1-5299-4269-9 (ISBN)
Description
Read the debut short story collection from the multi-award-winning author of The Raptures, now updated with a new bonus story.
'Jan Carson is a born storyteller' Lisa McInerney
A floating six-year-old tethered to the backyard fence; two siblings watching their parents argue inside a greenhouse; a human statue who's lost the ability to move; a support group for the haunted: the characters in Children's Children are all falling apart in their own peculiar ways.
Told in Jan Carson's distinctive voice, her debut short story collection contains absurdist, darkly humorous and heartbreaking stories which explore the concept of legacy, and the impact of one generation upon the next.
--
PRAISE FOR JAN CARSON:
'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' DONAL RYAN, author of Heart, Be at Peace
'Story after story glints with the strange, hard magic of the North . . . I adored them.' LUCY CALDWELL, author of These Days
'Jan Carson's stories are by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming - but always surprising' ERIC NGUYEN, author of Things We Lost to the Water
'Jan Carson is one of the most original voices I've read in years . . . I am truly in awe of this collection' TANIA JAMES, author of The Tusk That Did the Damage
'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' KARL GEARY, author of Montpelier Parade
'Jan Carson is a born storyteller' Lisa McInerney
A floating six-year-old tethered to the backyard fence; two siblings watching their parents argue inside a greenhouse; a human statue who's lost the ability to move; a support group for the haunted: the characters in Children's Children are all falling apart in their own peculiar ways.
Told in Jan Carson's distinctive voice, her debut short story collection contains absurdist, darkly humorous and heartbreaking stories which explore the concept of legacy, and the impact of one generation upon the next.
--
PRAISE FOR JAN CARSON:
'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' DONAL RYAN, author of Heart, Be at Peace
'Story after story glints with the strange, hard magic of the North . . . I adored them.' LUCY CALDWELL, author of These Days
'Jan Carson's stories are by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming - but always surprising' ERIC NGUYEN, author of Things We Lost to the Water
'Jan Carson is one of the most original voices I've read in years . . . I am truly in awe of this collection' TANIA JAMES, author of The Tusk That Did the Damage
'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' KARL GEARY, author of Montpelier Parade
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Edition type
New edition
File size
1,28 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-4269-9 (9781529942699)
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Person
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 O Faolain Short Story Prize.
