ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Winner of an EU Prize for Literature Jan Carson’s The Fire Starters is a blend of social realism and the fantastic which reveals the ongoing trauma that haunts Belfast despite the Good Friday Agreement set in place two decades ago in 1998.

At the 2020 (digital) Melbourne Writers Festival, Jan Carson was paired with Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott whose new novel The Rain Heron (n my TBR) also uses magic realism in a setting grounded in everyday reality. To quote from my report about what Carson said in this session:

The Fire Starters explores the history of sectarianism in Northern Ireland in a novel where the ghosts of the past inhabit the present during the Marching Season in Belfast.  These echoes of the past can be seen in real life: Carson said that whenever you see a limping man of a certain age in Belfast,  it’s because he was knee-capped during the Troubles.  The book  traces a father’s dismay when he learns that his son is involved in the violence that often accompanies the bonfires set by the competing sides.  Realism blends with the fantastic with rebellious young people setting mega fires that spark a conflagration.

Chair Angela Meyer asked: Can aspects of reality be better addressed by using the fantastic?  Carson said that the Northern Ireland tradition is realism, whereas in the republic, this is not so.  Citing writers like Salman Rushdie, Carson likes fantastic elements being used to show how absurd reality can be.  She says she doesn’t want people to ‘like’ her work, she wants then to wake up and pay attention to what’s in it.

Which is certainly the effect the book had on me.  I hadn’t thought much about the ongoing effects of the violence in Belfast.  From this distance and having no skin in the game, I thought the Troubles were all over and a good thing too.  Carson tackles this attitude in Chapter 1 ‘This is Belfast’, leading me to categorise this novel within ‘War, Armed Conflict and its Aftermath’ because though the conflict in Northern Ireland has long been characterised as ‘The Troubles‘, that innocuous-sounding name is a euphemism for a civil war of extraordinary brutality.

The Troubles is too less a word for all of this. It is a word for minor inconveniences, such as overdrawn bank accounts, slow punctures, a woman’s time of the month.  It is not a violent word, something as blunt and brutal as ‘apartheid’.  Instead, we have a word like ‘scissors’ which can only be said in the plural.  the Troubles is/was one monster thing.  The Troubles is/are many individual evils caught up together.  (Other similar words include ‘trousers’ and ‘pliers’.) The Troubles is always written with a capital T as if it were an event, as the Battle of Hastings is an event with a fixed beginning and end, a point on the calendar year.  History will no doubt prove it is actually a verb; an action that can be done to people over and over again, like stealing. (p.8)

It had not occurred to me that there remains in Belfast an undercurrent of fear that a small spark could start it all up again, nor that young people coming to maturity in a ‘post-Troubles world’ might not realise that reigniting rebellion might soon get out of control.

However the aspect of the book that haunts me still is the way Carson has explored parenting.  Two fathers symbolising all the parents bringing up children during the Troubles, struggle with their demons: Dr Jonathan Murray plans to harm the child he loves in order to protect others from her, while Sammy Agnew with a long-ago violent history of his own, has spawned a violent psychopath who threatens the safety of the entire city.

Years ago, one of my friends had a son who was a drug addict.  He stole from her and from other people and eventually came to the attention of the police.  When he jumped bail and took refuge at her place, she had to confront this same dilemma.  Should she call the police while he slept on her sofa?  What was in his best interests as well as her own and that of the community?  It was a nightmare scenario that no parent would ever want to face.  Carson shows the anguish of these parents seeking to protect the community from peril, and I thought of the parents of radicalised Muslims who face this dilemma too.  Murray’s story shows the fear of potential harm, while Agnew’s tragedy is already real.

The characterisation of these two fathers is brilliant.  Jonathan Murray’s story is told in first person, illuminating his own unloved life.

I don’t have a middle name.  This was my parents’ doing.  They had not planned on children.  If pressed, they might have expressed a preference for dogs or garden ornaments over miniature versions of themselves.  I was, and continue to be, an ‘accident’, though in truth I believe this word is an inaccurate term for the act of planting a child seed in your wife’s belly.  Accidents are occurrences without intent, such as broken crockery or crashed cars.  Often alcohol is involved. Yet, ‘accident’ is how my conception has always been referred to in the Murray household.  ‘Disappointing ending’ may be a better description, or ‘unfortunate repercussion,’ for I’ve been told the act itself was carefully planned and even featured candles. (p. 26)

These parents emigrate while Jonathan is still at school.  His infant daughter Sophie is the only good thing ever to happen to him.

Agnew’s anguish is told in third person omniscient:

Mark is different.  Mark has the ability to hurt people without actually touching them.  It is the distance that thrills him, that makes him feel like God.  This, Sammy knows, is a kind of greatness.  He is sometimes jealous of his son who, even at eight, is quicker than his father and mother combined.  This, Sammy knows, is the worst kind of power: fists can be held down or even severed, but a mind like Mark’s is impossible to contain.  He is afraid of his son.  There is no softness in him, not even with his mother.  (p.76)

But as you can see from these excerpts, Carson’s style has a wry humour, wickedly deceptive as it leads the reader towards a harrowing finale.  Interspersed through the alternating narratives of Sammy and Jonathan are curious vignettes about ‘Unfortunate Children’ — children who are born with special gifts such as having wings, but whose gifts are not always benign.  At first these vignettes don’t make sense, but it all comes together in the end, showing us that a naïve attitude to ‘difference’ can be risky because ‘difference’ can be life-enhancing or dangerous.  Parenting sometimes involves heart-breaking honesty and the courage to make very difficult decisions indeed.

Highly recommended.

Author: Jan Carson
Title: The Fire Starters
Publisher: Black Swan Ireland, Transworld, Penguin Random House UK, 2019
ISBN: 9781784163846, pbk., 291 pages
Source: personal library, purchased from Readings